From a Springsteen room to ‘Wacky Packages,’ the Philly area shows its ‘home museums’ to the Franklin Institute

Decades from now, children may learn about the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in a museum. Perhaps there will be an interactive exhibit on social distancing, and another on panic-buying toilet paper.

But for now, those museum workers who bring the past alive and make art, history, and science relatable find themselves like many of the rest of us — working from home or out of a job.

Ever creative, these individuals have turned to social media to bring some of the awe we feel within their institutions into our own lives — and to show us that what we’ve got around us is worthy of awe, too.

In the Philadelphia region, Lynne Calamia, 35, executive director at the Roebling Museum, a small industrial museum in Roebling, Florence Township, has been hosting Instagram story tours of the art hanging in her South Philly home.

“To be clear, my art collection is a bit of a joke, since it’s all collected from thrift stores and South Philly garbage heaps,” she said.

At the Franklin Institute, which is experiencing its longest closure in the museum’s nearly 200-year history, president and CEO Larry Dubinski said that right now, “science is more important than ever.”

“The Franklin Institute has survived unimaginable times throughout its nearly 200-year history — the Civil War, the Great Depression, pandemics, two World Wars, and we will survive this,” he said.

As part of a range of online programs to keep patrons engaged, the Franklin asked people to share what they collect on social media using the hashtag #MyHomeMuseum.

“At a time when we are all staying at home, we thought we would get to know our visitors and the Philly community better by challenging them to show us what they collect,” said Abby Bysshe, vice president of experiences and business development.

From cannonballs to bottle caps, here are a few of our favorite My Home Museum collections — and the stories behind them.

The Rev. Canon Kirk T. Berlenbach, a self-proclaimed “beer nerd,” started collecting unusual bottles of brew but quickly pivoted to beer caps about 15 years ago.

“Trophy bottles get a bit bulky,” said Berlenbach, 51, of Overbrook Farms. “It was much easier to save each unique bottle cap.”

His collection of 300 bottle caps and corks — all from beers he consumed — spans eight countries.

Berlenbach, canon for growth and support at the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, said he likes seeing the ways in which institutions — from churches to museums — are adapting today.

“What I really hope is that there are things we’re learning now that continue to be a part of churches or museums going forward," he said.

Franklin Institute board member Chris Fralic, 57, of Chestnut Hill, has been sharing photos of his collections of everything from Enron memorabilia (“It’s a poster child of what can go wrong in a company”) to his assortment of virtual-and-augmented reality equipment.

But the wackiest part of his home museum is a collection of hundreds of Wacky Packages.

In the vein of MAD Magazine and predating Garbage Pail Kids, Wacky Packages were satirical stickers and trading cards, first made by Topps in 1967, that used word play — and sometimes, gross-out images — to poke fun at name brands. Tootsie Roll became Footsie Roll, Cheerios became Cheapios, and so on.

Fralic said he used to buy them at stores as a kid and stick them to the wood paneling on his bedroom wall.

“And the stickiness still works, all these years later,” he said.

Philly social scene photographer HughE Dillon started his collection as a kid, too.

“My parents went out to eat a lot,” he said. “They’d bring back matches and I just started collecting them.”

Dillon’s matchbook collection now numbers in the thousands, most of which he keeps in a box in his closet. His favorite is from H.A. Winston, a former Philly burger franchise. He has fond memories of working at the restaurant’s Cherry Hill location in the early ’80s.

“I do keep that one on display with my H.A. Winston cocktail glass, which I borrowed from the restaurant on my last day of work,” he said.

Dhrithi Govindu, 7, of Wayne, loves the Franklin Institute, especially its “Your Brain” exhibit.

So when her mother, Suchitra Govindu, told her about the My Home Museum challenge, Dhrithi quickly gathered her collection of 36 puzzles to participate. But she’s not done showing off her home museum quite yet.

“She plans to post another tweet about her collection of Happy Meal toys and Hatchimals this Friday,” Suchitra Govindu said.

Among his collection of two dozen Revolutionary War cannonballs, Roy Clevenger most prizes two he said were carried across the Delaware River by Washington’s troops on Christmas 1776.

“To me, a cannonball from Washington’s Crossing is the most iconic Revolutionary War military relic you could ever own,” said Clevenger, 66, of Washington Crossing.

He keeps most of his cannonballs in small cases, except for a 24-pound one, which sits in a case on the floor.

“Otherwise, it’s almost a safety hazard,” he said.

Kathy Sanuck was born to run her home museum.

A fan of Bruce Springsteen since 1975, Sanuck, 67, of Fairmount, has turned an entire room in her home — one that was once her sons’ nursery — into a museum to Springsteen.

Sanuck has seen Springsteen in concert at least 35 times. She’s got two drawers full of Springsteen shirts, three signed albums, and a lithograph that hangs in her dining room. In her “Bruce room,” there are Springsteen pictures, posters, and clocks, along with about 50 framed magazine covers.

“Luckily, my husband likes his music as much as I do, and my sister and children feed my nuttiness,” she said.

We wanted to know what Derrick Pitts, the Franklin’s chief astronomer, collects. Meteorites? Moon boots? The secrets to interplanetary travel?

Turns out, it’s lapel pins.

Pitts began collecting lapel pins as souvenirs in Europe, but rarely wore them until he got his first NASA “meatball” pin and his first space shuttle pin more than 30 years ago.

“Back then, these pins weren’t widely available,” he said. “You could only receive them from NASA employees and the mission pins were only available to people connected to the missions somehow.”

All seven of Pitts’ space shuttle pins were given to him by either members of the crew or the payload team. He also has 40 space exploration pins — including ones for the Curiosity and Cassini missions and for the Space Station and Hubble telescope.

“Interestingly, I’m almost never asked about the pins I wear," Pitts said. "But I do ask others about their pins.”

His favorite is one of the rarest in his collection — a Soviet space shuttle pin he was given in the early ’90s by engineers from the Soviet space agency, Roscosmos.

“They were shopping around to American museums a full-scale model Soviet shuttle orbiter with the launch vehicle!” he said. “I had lunch with them in [the Franklin’s] cafeteria where we discussed the possibility of bringing the stack (as it’s called) to Philadelphia. I’ve never seen another one of these pins ever.”