Net54baseball.com Forums - Visited the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame

Max, I was going to hold my tongue when I saw this thread but you've hit on a big issue that deserves airing here. My father was a friend of Joe Sewell and became a regular visitor to the Alabama Hall back in the early 1980s. He attended several induction ceremonies and enjoyed the experience greatly. The Hall had an outstanding collection on many sports legends, including many uniforms, trophies, autographed pictures...cream of the crop stuff, as evidenced by the photos posted to start this thread. It is housed in a beautiful facility in the Civic Center in Birmingham...money was not an object in its creation.

Dad collected Joe Louis memorabilia. When he saw how little material there was on the Bomber at the Hall, he loaned many items for their display, including a beautiful copy of the 1938 Louis-Schmeling program, autographed tickets, newspapers with dramatic headlines, color pictures, etc. He was proud to improve the Louis display.

When I finally visited the hall in 2005, I was sickened to find that they used flourescent light tubes in all their showcases (presumably to control heat). I know there were also skylights and Dennis' posted photos show that the Yankee pictures are affect by direct sunlight (see reflections in the glass!). The light had bleached out almost all the colors on the program cover and badly browned many of the other items. (I've got photos somewhere and will post them later). The Louis display wasn't the only one affected...the color red is the first to go, and in the home state of the Crimson Tide that's not a good thing. I immediately spoke to Executive Director Bill Legg and expressed my concern and recommended purchase of UV sleeves to reduce the damage and consultation of experts to protect the material. He could not have been less interested in the subject.

I wonder how many priceless treasures are slowly destroyed by neglect like this. I'm sure the people in Birmingham didn't intend to harm these things but nevertheless the damage is done. It's still an amazing repository of stuff that could easily belong to Cooperstown, Canton, Canastota or Springfield, but of course they will be more appreciated by visitors in Alababa.

The road to "Hall" may be paved with good intentions, but that experience convinced me that the fate of great collectibles rests with private collectors, not museums.