This text was obtained via automated optical character recognition.
It has not been edited and may therefore contain several errors.

---

FOCUS ON PHILANTHROPY
Michael and Debra Wynne
Longtime donor Michael Wynne remembers when he was first introduced to the world of collecting. He was a small child when he attended his first coin show, and the experience planted the seed of a lifelong passion. “My father and my grandfather were from New Orleans, and they collected stamps,” Michael says. “They were active in the Crescent City Stamp Club, going back to the 1920s. I started collecting stamps and coins actively as early as four years old.” Decades and many artifacts later, Michael and his wife, Debra, are both active collectors. Michael first donated materials to The Collection in 1979 and has continued regularly over the years, making him one of THNOC’s longest-running individual sources of historical artifacts. Michael, who grew up in Lafayette, and Debra, a native of San Antonio and a history lover herself reside in Alexandria and spend many weekends traveling in search of fresh treasures for their collections. “We’ve probably been to every flea market and antiques store in the state,” Michael says. “We’ve gotten very professional.”
For the past six or seven years, the pair has focused on artifacts and memorabilia from all world’s fairs. They have visited former world’s fair sites and, in addition to possessing loads of related trivia—such as the fact
that the first waffle ice cream cone was sold at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair—the Wynnes are interested in the role these expositions played in the postindustrial world. “Now, we have the internet, and you can find out about anything,” Debra says. “Before, that’s what world’s fairs were all about: showing things. The telephone and telegraph—any modern thing—the world’s fair was the easiest way to show it off.”
The Wynnes display their world’s fair collection throughout their Alexandria home, including pictures, postcards, medals awarded to exhibitors, and visitor souvenirs, which Michael describes as “often very eyecatching and colorful.” Debra explains, “If you went to the fair in St. Louis in 1904 and you brought something home, to make sure people really saw that you went and you saw something, it would be bright and attractive and really stand out.”
After Michael’s early fascination with coins and stamps, he took up other common boyhood collections. “I moved on to match-books, license plates, books, glassware, Civil War-era items, historic papers, pictures,” he says. “I learned to be open to learn about everything. During all this time, I tried to learn as much as possible.”
As his interests became more specialized and his knowledge more refined, Michael
began to make a name for himself within the collecting world. When he was 17, he says, a leading expert on obsolete currency, Paul E. Garland, identified him as one of the premier collectors in the field. The same year, 1974, while a student at Nicholls State University, Michael appeared on WVUE-TV to speak about the importance of historic preservation.
Preservation is what sets the Wynnes apart from hobbyist collectors who keep their finds at home and in family archives. “What I learned over the years ... is that just having things is not the same as preserving things,” Michael says. “Everything needs to eventually go to the professionals.”
Michael has donated historical collections to 25 different institutions throughout Louisiana. “Every major university and large archive in the state has ongoing collections with me,” he says. “I’ve devoted my life to finding great things and preserving them for the future.”
Michael recently donated materials from his Louisiana politics collection—which he began his freshman year of high school by writing letters to state and local electoral candidates, for his civics class—and some of those items are now on display in the Williams Gallery exhibition From Winnfield to Washington: The Life and Career of Huey P. Long. The items were donated under the names of his and Debra’s two children, Michael D. Wynne Jr. and Anna Wynne Watt.
“THNOC has such a high level of professionalism and respect, and the combination is very rare,” Michael says. “Y’all respect what you have. You respect each other, and you respect the public in a professional manner.” —MOLLY REID
Summer 2015	19