Future President of the United States Jimmy Carter was staring at Marty Mullen’s chest. Then, future First Lady Rosalynn Carter did the same.

In the middle of a reception line, the Carters were looking at a button, dated 1900, of William Jennings Bryan and Adlai Stevenson (the first, grandfather of the Adlai Stevenson who ran against Ike) pinned to her coat lapel. Mullen and her husband, Frank, had just purchased the jugate from their antiques dealer and went directly to the reception with the rest of the Washington delegation during the 1976 Democratic National Convention in New York City. The beautiful button stood out in daguerreotype neon in the sea of green-and-white Carter campaign buttons.

"An aide came up afterward and informally checked it out," Mullen recalls with rueful laughter. "They (the Carters) were probably curious."

The Bryan/Stevenson button and more political memorabilia will be on exhibit in WSU’s Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections at Holland Library starting Monday (Oct. 30). The exhibit, "Presidential Politics 1824-1992: The Frank and Marty Mullen Political Memorabilia Collection," includes a chronological display of presidential campaign buttons and pins, as well as bumper stickers, postcards, sheet music, old newspapers, banners, hats and yard signs. Additional displays focus on third-party candidates, political humor and House Speaker Tom Foley’s memorabilia. The collection’s 15-year history also will be on view in the exhibit that continues through Dec. 29.

Items were selected from a gift of more than 1,800 buttons and pins and a wide range of paper items from Mullen to the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service. The gift has been appraised at more than $55,000.

"As many artists as I’ve (coordinated programs for), I’ve never done my own," Mullen says. "I’m presenting this as a personal memoir of our collecting, but also as a historical document."

Mullen, the creative director behind countless CUB Gallery, VPLAC and Art a la Carte programs since 1972, made the gift in memory of her husband. Frank was a WSU professor of political science from 1968 until 1986, when he passed away. He was one of the first two Burlington Northern Excellence in Teaching Award recipients at WSU and was noted for his commitment to his students both in and out of the classroom.

The Mullens started their collection in 1970 from some duplicate buttons of James Thurber, a former WSU colleague, American University professor and political commentator for National Public Radio.

Mullen has several favorite items. A stud made to look like a shoe with a hole in the bottom takes its history from a 1952 photograph of Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson sitting back in a chair with said hole on shoe. Fighting an egghead image, Stevenson and his supporters took advantage of the photo and created campaign mementos of holey shoes, including the stud. Frank purchased one as a gift for Mullen; she acquired a second from Rosalee Daggy Miller, daughter of Maynard Lee Daggy, a speech professor for more than two decades at WSU and the man for whom Daggy Hall was named. Miller grew up as a child in the house where Mullen resides.

The Mullens expanded their collection during Christmases and birthdays, when they gave each other mementos to add to it. Students also served as a source of buttons, especially when they graduated and worked for campaigns themselves.

The Mullens’ own involvement in Democratic politics enabled them to accumulate many items—and more great memories. Frank served several terms as Whitman County Democratic Central Committee chair; as such, he was responsible for ordering buttons. In 1976, Frank ordered nine-inch-wide Carter buttons and went to class wearing one of them inside his coat, hidden from view. While talking to his students about the importance of voting in the upcoming election, Frank finally removed his coat and hung it up where they could see the monster button.

"The class busted up laughing," Mullen says.

Mullen also had a hand in classroom humor. In May 1982, she sent balloons to Frank in class to celebrate the upcoming end of semester. The deliveryman dressed up in a Richard Nixon rubber mask.

"(Frank) knew something was up when a student who normally sat in the back of the class sat up front," she says. "It was probably Richard Nixon’s only visit to this campus." The student snapped a photograph of Frank’s bemused expression to add to the Mullen collection.

Other memories are more sobering. Mullen went to college in 1960, when John F. Kennedy ran for president. It was Mullen’s first time working in a political campaign, and her work prompted her to major in political science. Three years later, Mullen, a master’s student at Texas Technology College, was working in a classroom one Saturday morning, listening to an album she got from her brother, "Sing Along with JFK." Frank came into the classroom to tell Mullen that Kennedy had been assassinated.

"It was a long time before we could think about playing that album," she says. Mullen doesn’t say anything more for a moment.

Organizing their collection has been bittersweet, Mullen acknowledges, but mainly it’s been a golden opportunity to dig through decades of politics and remember them piece by piece.

"All in all, the collection is idiosyncratic, relatively unfocused and eclectic—just what one might expect from two political junkies who were collecting not as an investment, but for the sheer fun of it," she explains.