Affable, refined and ever the fashion maven, Akron’s Peggy Irene (Warner) Harry has long been admired by her many diverse attachments: family and friends, as well as her fellow residents and staff at The Merriman.
And the soon-to-be inductee into the centenarian club — she turns 100 on July 22 — is quite the doyenne of still other attachments: namely, buttons.
Peg, as she prefers, is a longtime member of the Akron Button Club and the National Button Society.
I caught up with her last Monday morning at the monthly meeting of the local club, which convenes at Akron’s St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and where, not surprisingly, she was being toasted by fellow members.
Peg — a 48-year collector — like the other members, is very button-specific. Hers are the highly treasured, pierced/carved iridescent white buttons known as “Bethlehem” and “Jordan” pearls. “They look just like lace,” she explained, joie de vivre percolating in her voice.
Member Liz Vernon of Akron even baked button-shaped shortbread cookies to celebrate the pretty-in-pink Peg, for the way she has threaded her way into their lives and helped to get them even more hooked in their hobby of collecting these miniature works of art.
“Miss Peg is a true inspiration,” said 15-year member Vernon. “She had pneumonia and the flu in December, then a bad sinus infection. But she bounced back … She’s the most caring and sharing person you would ever want to meet.”
Asked about her secret to a long and healthy life, Peg — who relies on a walker for safety — didn’t hold back:
“I exercise every day in my room. I wouldn’t miss it! It really does help me keep going. But I think it’s also in my genes.”
Widowed in 1988 (her late husband was Winchester Harry), the stay-at-home mother and former Akron schoolteacher said she got hooked on collecting after discovering her grandmother’s button box.
She formerly maintained collections of thimbles, stamps and handkerchiefs, and head-turning gardens of peonies that were prized, cut and dried for bouquets at Stan Hywet.
Volunteer extraordinaire, Peg was active at Stan Hywet and formerly served as president of Fairlawn Garden & Civic Center where the Akron Button Club used to meet.
Arriving later in the month to celebrate her milestone birthday will be her daughter, Dr. Betty Tarnowski of Charleston, S.C., a cancer specialist with the National Institutes of Health; two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Make no mistake about it, Peg Harry plans to commemorate her birthday all month long.
“It’s never too early to celebrate your 100th birthday!” she opined.
Her fellow button club members — who brought lots of party fixings for the occasion — couldn’t have agreed more.
Early in line to wish the honoree well was Charlene Baker of Gates Mills, who is as committed to the hobby and the club as anyone other than perhaps Peg.
“Peg embodies the spirit of Button Club collectors: generosity, enthusiasm and knowledge,” Baker noted, adding, “I come in any kind of weather like the mailman … I love this club.”
Baker was forever linked with button collecting when she visited a dress shop and eyed a display case of bracelets made from the most gorgeous buttons you would ever want to see.
Soon after that, she found herself popping open her grandmother’s tin filled with buttons of all pedigrees: “I ended up making bracelets for Christmas [for several female relatives]. Each told a different story. I used Daddy’s Army buttons on one, and the buttons on the outfit my mother wore to the hospital when she delivered us.”
Baker — who donned a button ring from Zambia — seemed to echo the sentiments of other members when she exclaimed, “You can never be too absurd when it comes to buttons. This really is a cool hobby!”
“Little Peg,” she continued, “is so dear to us and to the next generation of collectors.”
Joel James, 8, who has been coming to the meetings for the last two summers with his mother Barb, of Berlin Center, is in that next generation, as he’s already become quite the discerning button buff: “I have some buttons that I play with and others that I place on cards … It’s a nice hobby and I learn a lot.”
Susan Chisnell-Spires of Wooster, who also serves as president of Buckeye State Button Society, was bitten by the bug in 1994, catching it from her stepmother. The Buehler’s grocery prep cook is zoned in on black glass.
Sarah Smith of Stow — who retired from McDonnell Douglas, a major aerospace manufacturer and defense contractor, in California — said button collecting also was a serious pastime of first ladies Jacqueline Kennedy, who was fascinated by French enamels, and Eleanor Roosevelt.
The beauty of the Akron Button Club, as one member pointed out, is in the dissimilarity of tastes, as it has some members who snap up plastic buttons that cost as little as 50 cents a piece while others’ investments are more exotic and can go into the hundreds of dollars.
Several members plan to make the trip to Appleton, Wis., in August for the National Button Society’s “Diamond Jubilee” convention and competition.
The local club’s membership rolls vary from 25 to 45 and include folks of dissimilar backgrounds like veteran member Phil Austin, a recently retired second bassoonist with the Cleveland Orchestra, who collected buttons from every country he visited in that role. Austin’s wife Emily, of Chagrin Falls, who joined the club about three years after her husband, said both are also members of the Cleveland Button Club, which is considerably smaller than the Akron club.
Vernon — a longtime collector of antiques and many things sewing-related — got hooked on buttons some 19 years ago while attending an estate sale in Hudson where the entire contents of a general store were up for grabs. “I purchased all of the buttons there. I wrote the biggest check I’ve ever written in my life.”
When she did get around to joining the Akron Button Club, Vernon said it afforded her not only a priceless education on a subject she’d come to love, but also many priceless friendships along the way.
“Collecting buttons is the story of history in miniature and craftsmanship,” she said. “It dates back to George Washington’s inaugural buttons at the First Continental Congress … So, we’re just not here playing with buttons.”
Equally button-smitten Beverly Chorey of Poland, Ohio, has been collecting for five years. “When my mother died 10 years ago, I found her button box, and one thing led to another.”
Peg Harry is hands-on with buttons in yet another arena, one that male residents at The Merriman certainly appreciate. Akron’s Frances Howell noted that Peg regularly volunteers to replace missing buttons on their shirts.
“I think some of them keep pulling buttons off their shirts just to spend time with her,” Howell mused, drawing a laugh from Peg and others.
Peg — who seems never to have met a project she’d shy away from — scored the top prize a couple of years ago for a pink velvet bra she decorated with sparkling rhinestone buttons in a “Bras Across the City” fundraiser for breast cancer.
“I’m just me,” Peg shrugged, flashing a big smile. “But I do have a lot of fun!”
That, dear readers, is the real formula for a beautiful life at any age.
Jewell Cardwell can be reached at 330-996-3567 or jcardwell@thebeaconjournal.com.