It was an ordinary day. And, that was the problem...! If I had only known a few days before, I might have been able to bid on some of Theodore Rossevelt Stillwell's really neat collectable pieces that had sat in a trunk in the third floor of his home for years and years. Mr. Stillwell worked for the Ephrata post office for 36 years. At one time he had written a letter to Jackie Robinson asking him for a signed baseball. He did get a response from the new Brooklyn Dodger telling him..."If it was at all possible for me to send a ball I would but being new to the club I can't start out asking for balls. I'm sure you understand that. That letter sent to Mr. Stillwell was expected to bring between $5,000 and $10,000 when it was auctioned. I'm sorry to say I wasn't the top bidder and don't know how much it brought at auction. Boy...if I had only read about the sale in the newspaper a week or so ago, I might be the new owner of the letter. Then again...I really don't need the letter as much as I need the money I would have spent on the letter. There were supposed to have been hundreds of other autographs, letters and photos auctioned off from Mr. Stillwell's collection. Mike Keller, from Lancaster auction company H.K. Keller said that this one trunk must have been overlooked when the house was searched some time ago when talking about an auction. Then, Stillwell's daughters, Gloria and Nancy found the chest. The two daughters, now in their late 80s, had moved into a retirement home. Their old white two bedroom, one bathroom house on Fulton Street in the small town of Ephrata was being prepared to be sold and for some reason this trunk was saved from the trash. Lead auctioneer, Mike Keller, for some reason decided to open the chest. And then...well I'm sure you realize what he must have thought when he opened it! The daughters knew about the stuff in the trunk, but thought no one would want that old stuff. To them it was just their dad's old hobby. Mr. Stillwell died in 1975 at the age 67. His wife died in 1988. By the time the trunk was discovered, the auction company had purchased the house and contents. Luckily for the daughters that the auction company decided to split the profits from the stuff in the trunk with them. A few of the items in the trunk the daughters had remembered, and asked the auction company if they were still in the trunk. Yep! A signed book by President Eisenhower, typed letters from Mamie Eisenhower, a letter from J. Edgar Hoover, letters from Howard Hughes, letters from Ella Fitzgerald, a card from baseball player Honus Wagner, letters from the Andrews sisters, letters from boxer Joe Lewis, a letter from baseball great Honus Wagner and many more were part of what was in the trunk. It would be hard to come up with an equivalent to match Mr. Stillwell's collection. Perhaps a letter from General Patton may be the best! Or maybe the letter from baseball great Lou Gehrig! Mike Keller finds it hard to come up with a modern equivalent of Mr. Stillwell's hobby! He wonder's what the autograph-signers were thinking. "There's a lot of pressure high up in the military and I'm sure they appreciate those little notes like the ones they evidently got from Mr. Stillwell. I guess we will never know. And, unless I can locate a listing of what all the items brought at auction, we will never know what the collection was worth! It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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| Mike Keller holds an Amos Stage football while Tim Keller is holding an autographed 1950 Honus Wagner autographed photo. |
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| Autographed photo of Richard Nixon. |
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