One Alabama wife’s junk is her husband’s political pleasure
Lance Hyche displays some of the political memorabilia in his Greystone home: campaign posters for George Wallace and Robert F. Kennedy. (Solomon Crenshaw Jr./Alabama NewsCenter)
There’s a room in Melissa Hyche’s Greystone Farms home that she hates.
It’s the room where the Alabama Power Human Resources staffer’s husband has his collection of political campaign buttons, posters and other paraphernalia.
“She says I’ve taken a nice room of the house and junked it up with my political stuff,” said Lance Hyche, a former Alabama Education Association field rep. “That’s exactly what she thinks.”
One wife’s junk is a husband’s treasure, and Lance Hyche has more than 1,000 of those gems in a sitting room just off the foyer of their residence. And that’s only the beginning.
“I’ve got more than 5,000 more in storage, in boxes and bags,” he said. “In my room, I’ve got a huge collection of Obama and (Bill) Clinton posters.”
He also has stacks of posters promoting the campaigns of Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.
“I could fill a whole wall of Clinton stuff,” he said. “I just don’t have space for it.”
A job and a hobby
The 40-year-old has campaign buttons that date back to 1896, when Republican William McKinley defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan in a race for president of the United States.
Politics is a hobby and a job for Hyche, who owns and operates Greystone Public Affairs. He’s long worked in the political arena after majoring in political science at the University of North Alabama.
He started his collection right out of college.
“I got involved in some local races,” Hyche said. “I remember volunteering for Congressman Bud Cramer up there in the Fifth District in north Alabama. I started picking up some literature, some buttons from the very first race.”
That simple beginning in the late 1990s was followed by shopping trips to antique shops and cyber shopping sprees on eBay.
“I picked up buttons wherever I could find them,” he said. “Posters as well, and other items. It’s blossomed from there, I guess.”
Not an endorsement
The collector has several items tied to former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, including a box of bubble gum cigars. “I tell my son if you take one, you’ve got to chew them all,” he said.
Lance Hyche with a box of George Wallace bubble gum cigars, part of his extensive collection of items from the four-time Alabama governor’s campaigns. (Solomon Crenshaw Jr./Alabama NewsCenter)
The items include an autographed photo of Wallace’s 1963 stand at the University of Alabama to keep black students from enrolling. But his collection of Wallace pins, posters and collectibles should not be interpreted as an endorsement of the former governor.
“I certainly don’t endorse those segregationist ideas by any means,” he said. “I just enjoy collecting a little part of history. The various things I have tell you a lot about what was going on at that time.”
Hyche’s collection of political items includes a bronze “F.D.R. The Man of the Hour” electric clock of President Franklin Roosevelt. The same type clock is on display at the Smithsonian Institution, Hyche said.
A similar clock was listed for $1,000 on biblio.com.
Asked the value of his collection, Hyche estimated in the tens of thousands of dollars.
“It’s not about value to me,” he said. “It’s something I enjoy. It’s not something I would ever sell.”
