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Andy Grunstrom has collected every Heritage Days button since the first one in 1980. He pins them on his shirt, which he figures weighs about 6 pounds now.
If you’ve ever wondered how many Heritage Days buttons there are, Columbia Falls collector Andy Grundstrom can tell you: 84.
“Each year I’d buy a Heritage Days button and stick it to my hat,” Grundstrom said recently.
Then they wouldn’t all fit on his hat, so he stuck them on the front of his shirt. Then the back of his shirt. Today, the shirt is festooned with buttons and so is the hat.
All told, Grundstrom has all 84 commemorative Heritage Days buttons.
He figures the shirt weighs 6 pounds.
Grundstrom, now 83 and on oxygen, said he still tries to get to every Heritage Days he can. He most certainly makes sure he gets himself a button. The buttons help pay for the annual celebration in Columbia Falls. Over the years they’ve been primarily designed by Shirley Reynolds.
Grundstrom grew up an Army kid, bouncing around the country with the family. He went in the Army himself at the age of 17.
When he got out, he eventually became a contract telephone cable splicer. Grundstrom met his wife, Bubbles, back in 1983 and moved up here. He started collecting Heritage Days buttons immediately. But he was missing three of them and he wanted the complete set. Friend Jimmie Trahanov helped him out, had the missing three and gave them to him.
The first Heritage Days celebration in Columbia Falls was in July of 1980 (there was a celebration in 1979, too, but it was called Western Days, for what it’s worth.)
Grundstrom is a treasure trove of button history.
From 1980 to 1998, for example, only one button was printed. The first eight years the printed picture was the same, but a different color.
In 1998 the buttons got a little bigger, too, from 2-1/4-inches to 3 inches wide. 2015 was a big button year — eight were printed.
As a veteran, Grundstrom has marched in the parade with other members of the American Legion over the years. The shirt with the buttons is kept safely in a dark closet most of the year. He says he puts a little glue on the pins to make sure the buttons stay on.