Show Me Your Office by Marty Willadsen

I’ve been writing the “Show Me” column for quite some time now and for the first time find myself in the awkward position of having to apologize to all those whose offices have been featured before.  I mean this one’s not fair.  You see, fifty year old Jerry Vickery has a couple of slight advantages over the regular memorabilia hound.  The Belleville, IL native is the current curator of the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame and former curator of the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame.  Talk about knowing the business!

Like many of us, Jerry’s passion began with baseball cards. It was just a hobby. His real source of income was designing custom made cabinetry.   But in 1983, when one of the customers of his cabinetry business was so pleased with her finished product she offered up a box of original WWII posters as a special gift for Jerry.  Vickery in turn traded the posters for baseball items which he used to decorate his son’s room. A few pieces though, he kept for himself to supplement his fledgling memorabilia habit.

About four years later, the Vickerys purchased a baseball card store in Ballwin, MO.  Being closed on Mondays, Jerry often went to the St. Louis Cardinal Museum with his young son, Jerry Jr.  After one visit the elder Vickery offered to volunteer his time and services to refurbish some of the outdated displays.  The next day, he had a part time job! 

For the next two years, he worked fervently bringing new life to the previously tired exhibits. And then on the last day of the season in 1991, at a company party, Jerry presented some plans and sketches to some of the Cardinals brass. Outlined therein was Jerry’s brainchild of bringing the museum the touch of class it deserved. “No can do” was the response… “too much money!”

Not easily deterred, Jerry realized that it would take the endorsement of someone of far greater importance to the Cardinals to get this project off the ground.  So the next day he made a phone call, to a man he had never met; Stan Musial.  Stan agreed to have lunch with Jerry the following afternoon and the two decided it would be best to meet at Vickery’s office, an old storage room under the bleachers at Busch Stadium.

At their meeting, Jerry explained his dream to the St. Louis legend and half heartedly asked for Stan’s seal of approval.  Stan smiled, nodded politely and autographed  Jerry’s blueprint for the new museum.  The pair then embarked on their Friday luncheon appointment with no further discussion of the project.

Monday morning found a yellow Post-It note affixed to Jerry’s office door, mandating that he see Mr. Fred Kuhlman as soon as he arrived at work.  It seems that over the weekend, Mr. Musial had placed a call to the Cardinal’s president promising to contribute a large portion of his personal memorabilia should the project take foot.  Mr. Kuhlman had already shared the phone call with August Busch and almost like magic, $350,000 appeared in the budget for the new venture.  And with that, Jerry was now a full time employee of the St. Louis Cardinals with total design and creative control of the project.

Jerry sold the card store, but kept much of the memorabilia he had acquired, thus giving him a substantial foundation for his collection.  As the museum had no budget for memorabilia purchases Jerry would personally purchase  items and loan the items for display at the museum.  In 1992 after setting up as a vendor at two card shows, in Atlanta and San Diego, Vickery learned of the actual value of his personal collection, as he made more money in those two weekends than he was receiving annually as a full time employee of the Cardinals.  It was then that Jerry resigned from the Cards and became a serious collector.  In the two years he had spent with the team, he had developed a long list of memorabilia traders, many of whom would call him when they had a special deal.

In 1993 Vickery opened Hall of Fame Designs, a business that went into people’s homes to create Hall of Fame type displays for them, using their own memorabilia.  It was during this time that Jerry designed the SLU Museum and the Matthew Dickey Boys Club Museum.  The venture existed until 1998 when Jerry, along with Hall of Famer Bob Broeg co-authored The Cardinal Encyclopedia.  That same year Vickery was named curator of the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. He has also served as a historical consultant developing museums for Kansas University, and The University of South Florida .

With Jerry’s collection now numbering into the thousands of pieces, Patty, Jerry’s bride of 25 years has long since abandoned the idea of a traditional family room in the basement. Where family photos once hung, the walls are now adorned with the likeness’ on many a Cardinal, Brown or Billiken hero.  And it’s not just the walls. Everything is covered.  Everything! 

Vickery’s keen eye and sense of style allows him to group like-items together in a way that only a curator could accomplish.  He can take an item which could have been discarded from any junior high locker in America forty years ago and allow it to find relevance in his display.  His depth perception is like no other and that’s part of the fun when viewing his collection.  You’re admiring a beautiful piece in the foreground when all of a sudden; your eyes are drawn to the back to see an equally impressive item.

Probably as enjoyable as ogling over his collection is listening to Jerry reminisce about how he acquired some of his pieces.  To be sure, many of them were purchased at high-dollar market prices with cold, hard cash. But hearing of how a few of the pieces were nothing more than “flea market finds” purchased for cents on the dollar, or gifts from those who admired Jerry’s appreciation for the history of sports, brings new found hope for those of us without the budgets of Cooperstown.