Sanderson board praises founding curator

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The Chris Sanderson Museum Board of Directors celebrated the museum’s 45th anniversary last week and members spent time praising Tommy Thompson, the museum’s founding curator.

The board held a members-only party on July 20 during which author Gene Pisasale presented Thompson with the book Pisasale wrote about him.

Sanderson (1882-1966), an eccentric Chadds Ford icon to some, was a schoolteacher, fiddler, dance caller, actor, poet and a collector of all things he thought significant.

Former board President Sally Jane Denk-Hoey praised Thompson for his efforts to get the museum in order after Sanderson died.

“Tommy Thompson is the Sanderson Museum and the Sanderson Museum is Tommy Thompson,” said Denk-Hoey. “Granted, if Chris Sanderson had not saved this collection, we wouldn’t have this collection, but if Chris had just died, everything would have been trashed, truly, because it looked like trash when he died. …Tommy saved everything. He read how to save collections and he scientifically categorized things. For someone who is not in museum science, he did a phenomenal job.”

Current board President Sue Minarchi agreed.

“It is [Tommy] we have to thank for this wonderful museum,” Minarchi said.

Sanderson was known for saving everything. Along with his mother, he lived, for a time, in the Ring House, Washington’s Headquarters during the Battle of the Brandywine. He began collecting artifacts from the property that later became Brandywine Battlefield Park. He and his mother later moved to the little house on Creek Road that has since become the museum. Sanderson continued to collect while living there.

His collections included artifacts from the War of Independence to the Civil War and up through the two world wars.

Sanderson also hoarded newspapers.

According to Minarchi, “If you had seen the museum [before it was cleaned up] you’d know what it was like when Chris died. He had a collection of things that were all over the place. So Tom, and his wife, Joyce, and the other founders sifted through all of the articles in Chris’ collection, and catalogued and indexed them and put them on display.”

Those founding board members include the late Andrew Wyeth and Richard Layton, an artist from Wilmington.

“You can’t imagine … the piles and piles of debris,” Layton. “Chris saved everything.”

Layton added that it took those early board members, with Thompson in the lead, “a good year and a half, and add on to that” to clean up the house.

He said Thompson’s efforts were key, calling him the “executive president” of getting people focused and organizing the work, leading to the current display.

Thompson was asked what it was like cleaning up after Sanderson died.

“It’s pretty hard to describe,” he said. “Newspapers on the floor, everywhere, canned food on the steps going upstairs. Upstairs, newspapers on the floor, in the hallway, on the bed, newspapers in the bathtub up to here,” Thompson said holding his hand high above his head.

He said he’s “very much satisfied” with the way the house, now museum, looks now.

“It’s a nice tribute to Chris,” he said.

He doesn’t want to see anything changed in the future, Thompson said, but does want to see it maintained.

Photo caption: Author Gene Pisasale, left, with Tommy Thompson, the founding curator of the Chris Sanderson Museum on Creek Road in Chadds Ford Township. Pisasale gave Thompson a copy of his book about Thompson’s efforts as the museum’s first curator. (Photo by Rich Schwartzman)

About Rich Schwartzman

Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.

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