His favorite things Former Illinois congressman's museum as col

WEST FRANKFORT, Ill. -- The doors of the low, gray building behind the Route 37 Motel swing open to a cardboard cutout of Barbara Bush festooned in Christmas ornaments. A few steps away, a wooden display case holds a blurry photograph of Abraham Lincoln's dead body.

Welcome to former Rep. Ken Gray's Presidential Museum and More, a collection of political artifacts and odds and ends gathered during a colorful 24-year career representing Southern Illinois in Congress.

"I'm trying to give something back to the people, to preserve history for posterity," said Gray, 78. "And I want there to be something here for everyone."

There probably is. Rows and rows of Barbie and Ken dolls dressed as historical figures and a fountain pen Lyndon Johnson used to sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965 are among the collection of Gray's 13,000 favorite things soon to be on display in his hometown.

The Prince of Pork

The famously dapper dresser, whose success at bringing federal money back to his district earned him the nickname Prince of Pork, has been out of the public eye since a stroke in 1999 left his speech slurred and his right side paralyzed.

Now he hopes the museum he plans to open Aug. 1 will put him back in circulation, highlight the $7 billion in federal projects he takes credit for steering to his district and teach people some history in the process. He sees it as a public service. He has displayed his memorabilia over the years, but this is his grandest vision yet.

"The Smithsonian doesn't have all the political memorabilia I do," Gray declared on a recent tour, wearing a white polyester suit and multicolor shirt. His short Afro has been dyed a pale red. "If I left this stuff in storage, everyone loses."

For history lovers, there are pens Johnson and Richard Nixon used to sign major legislation; a couple of wooden tables Gray said he bought from George Washington's estate; a trademark coonskin cap worn by 1956 vice-presidential candidate Estes Kefauver on a campaign swing through Southern Illinois, and more.

Queen Isabella Barbie

Then there are the Barbie and Ken dolls -- Gray counts more than 1,000 of them -- dressed in period clothing to depict everyone from Queen Isabella of Spain to Prince Charles and Lady Diana. Gray borrowed the collection from a former constituent so that visitors can appreciate the elderly artist's intricate work.

"It's phenomenal," he said, pointing to Lady Di's miniature wedding dress.

And hanging everywhere are giant black and white photographs of Gray -- usually young and smiling, often dressed in the only white sport coat in a sea of congressional navy, and always reminding the people back home how close their local guy had become to the most powerful men in the world.

In one, he stands beaming between John F. Kennedy and Johnson on what he says was the eve of the president's fateful trip to Dallas in November 1963.

As they wander through several rooms filled with displays, visitors will hear what sounds like a bubbling brook. It comes from an electric photograph of a waterfall on the wall.

Scandal lovers may be disappointed, however.

Gray hasn't included any exhibits on what by all accounts was an active social life in Washington, where he kept a houseboat docked on the Potomac River to, as he puts it, play host to Boy Scout groups and other visitors from home.

Tales of less wholesome social gatherings on the boat made it into newspapers nationwide when one of Gray's former receptionists, Elizabeth Ray, and other women named the boat as the location of several of their trysts with congressmen.

Today, Gray dismisses memories of the scandal with his perfect, white smile. Out of 285 employees over 24 years on the Hill, Ray was only one, he said. "It was a blip."

He says he's not sure if he'll charge admission or spend some of his own money maintaining the museum. He doesn't seem to care. History is worth preserving, he says, his own included.