For
many years, Lance Spallholz ’69 did not know he was a deltiologist.
The
term refers to individuals who collect postcards, and Spallholz came
across it one day as he was looking through Web sites, gathering
information about his hobby.
For
more than a dozen years, Spallholz has been a dedicated and
specialized postcard collector. His area of interest is Union College,
and he has about eighty postcards that show the College from 1906
through the 1920s. He is fascinated with the postcards because both
the pictures on the front and the messages on the back are so
evocative of a bygone era.
“Back
then, there was very little private photography, and there was no
color photography,” he says. “So this was how people saw the
world.”
Many
of the postcards were handpainted in Germany, and it is obvious, from
the multitude of ways the Nott Memorial is colored, that the
illustrators never saw the building.
Just
as interesting and nostalgic are the messages. One postcard of the
Nott Memorial carries the message, “Here is one of the great
buildings where many great men have received their learning.” On
a 1908 postcard of South College the sender wrote, “X marks
Harry’s room where we are having a fun time, but too strenuous for
me.” Another postcard of South College says, “If your father
had a good memory, he could tell you what a good time he had
here.” And on another: “Hard luck, Milton. Nothing but rain
up here.”
“Lots
of people didn’t have phones, so many of the messages were of the
‘Hope to get up this weekend’ variety that today would be
e-mail,” Spallholz says. “It was a fairly cheap way to stay
in touch.”
Spallholz
began to collect the postcards on visits he and his wife, Norma, made
to antique shops. As she looked for furniture for their house, he
began looking through the bins of postcards. He has found Union
postcards as far away as Maryland, where he paid fifty cents for a
card of South College.
His
interest in Union postcards is a natural. His grandfather, an uncle,
two great-uncles, and his daughter, Julianna, also graduated from the
College; he and Norma met in the Rathskeller and were married in
Memorial Chapel; and he has been a computer science instructor at
Union since 1985, when he left high school teaching to teach UNIX
systems management, applications programming, and computer languages
to Union students.
Not
surprisingly, given his profession, Spallholz has created a Web page
containing images of his postcards (http://tardis.union.edu/~spallhol/postcards).
He says he doesn’t know how many different Union scenes appeared on
postcards and would be happy to hear from alumni who come across a
Union card.
His
hobby, he says, is one of sentiment. “I don’t think the cards
have much monetary value, but I like the little messages. To those
people, they were very important. And now they’re gone.”