Olympic memories gather dust

For two weeks during the 2002 Winter Games, Linda Thatcher and a few of her co-workers at the Utah Historical Society strolled downtown from one Olympic hospitality house to the next, looking for donations.

Anxious to chronicle one of the biggest events in Utah history, they collected Olympic banners, costumes, pins, mascots — even official shot glasses and manhole covers. In all, thousands of items were donated or purchased with grant money so that future generations of Utahns can learn about the year the world was welcome here.

Now, with opening ceremonies of the 2006 Winter Olympic Games set for Friday in Torino, more than a few people might be wondering where they can see some of these items and relive those proud weeks of February 2002.

But there's one problem: Almost all of the donations the Utah Historical Society collected are locked away with other historic state artifacts in the basement of the Rio Grande Depot.

Since the Division of Fine Arts took over the historical society's exhibit space 1 1/2 years ago, there has been no place to display the society's antiques, manuscripts, statuary and anything else — including those 2002 Roots berets and green Jell-O pins — that tell us a little bit about where we've been and who we are.

It's a shame, but there isn't much Linda and her co-workers can do about it. It's their job to collect historical items, catalogue them and preserve them. But unless the state provides them with space for displays, they have no choice except to let the donations gather dust like treasures in an old aunt's attic.

Hoping to see the Olympic-sized collection from 2002, I recently joined Linda, who is coordinator of collections for the historical society, and volunteer archivists Sharon Odekirk and Nate Goodman for a Free Lunch chat in the Rio Grande basement.

Stored between a collection of antique typewriters and some Pioneer Memorial Theater wigs are shelves full of Olympic baseball caps, Olympic ice-skating Barbies, cookie mixes, key chains and shopping bags. Drawer after drawer is filled with volunteers' uniforms, scarves, pins, calendars and photographs.

The day after the Games ended, Nate Goodman dashed across the street to collect Olympic banners from Pioneer Park before they disappeared forever. Even something as simple as a shuttle bus stop sign is important to the state's history, he says.