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Joe Wilson Moves Offices—And Memories

January 1, 2017
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Joe Wilson Moves Offices—And Memories

Charleston Post & Courier

Emma Dumain

WASHINGTON — Like most real estate relocations, they aren't without some anguish.

U.S. Rep. Mick Mulvaney at some point lost track of his desk, which contained some sensitive documents, like his passport.

"President Teddy Roosevelt once observed that hard labor and painful effort were the only roads to better things in life," U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford mused on Twitter.

But perhaps the heaviest lift of them all is being undertaken by the staff of U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, who is probably one of the most notorious collectors of paraphernalia on Capitol Hill.

Wilson, who has been in Congress since 2001, has so many photographs, plaques, certificates, figurines and works of art that he has been using closets for display purposes.

"If you're wondering, 'what kind of pack rat?' Well, yes I am," Wilson said recently in his former office in early December, which at that time was only partially disassembled. It was just a few days before his scheduled move to an entirely different office building on the Capitol campus.

Wilson has made a practice of keeping and displaying every honor he's ever received, dating back to his kindergarten diploma and the joke "physical fitness award" he earned after running a friend's campaign for student body secretary at Charleston High School.

"Of course we won," Wilson said.

He has every "certificate of appreciation" up on the walls in frames, including printouts of the Columbia Free Times awards for "best local politician" in 2001 and 2013.

"When people give me a plaque or an award, I appreciate it," he explained.

Wilson's spread of framed artifacts begins as soon as the wall hits the floor. They work their way to the ceiling. Behind his desk he has photos of notable politicians and world leaders throughout history, including portraits of them alone or posing with Wilson. Some are signed. Some photos Wilson has actually gone in and scribbled a date or other pertinent information in one corner with a permanent marker.

Some exhibits are true pieces of history. There's a black and white photograph of Wilson as a little boy with his three brothers and father posing in an advertisement for a Standard Oil service station in downtown Charleston. Wilson's grandfather was a division manager of the business, and his mother designed the storefront so it would look fit with the downtown architecture.

A photo of Wilson during his stint as a U.S. Senate page in 1967, posing with Strom Thurmond and then-Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen, had already been packed up for the move. But Wilson still had on his desk a Wedgwood plaque of Abraham Lincoln that Dirksen gave him at the time. Dirksen's name is engraved on the back.

This will be Wilson's fourth office since he was elected in 2001 in a special election to succeed late-U.S. Rep. Floyd Spence. At the time of his death the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Spence had prime real estate, with a window overlooking the Capitol Dome. Office guests would get their photographs taken by the window as a memento of their visit to Washington, D.C.

But Wilson had to move to the office space of a more junior member of Congress the following year, forcing him to say goodbye to the iconic view. Before they moved, a staffer took a photo of that view and enlarged it so Wilson could remember what once was.

Wilson changed offices again four years later, taking with him all of his treasures, ones he brought with him when he first arrived on Capitol Hill and others he has accumulated along the way. He also lost some things.

"We had a circumstance where the beautiful glass plaques that I received and crystal eagles people gave me, including some crystal that I had bought in Slovakia and Czech Republic, (staff) put it in a trash can on the sofa to transport, and the cleaning crew thought that was trash," Wilson lamented. "Now, hey, these were not phenomenally expensive items, but they were meaningful to me."

He said there wasn't a set system for reassembling artifacts from one office move to another, though staff had taken photographs to give Wilson an idea of where things were in previous locations.

Some things will stay the same, though, like the framed portraits of George Washington and Robert E. Lee — the namesakes of Wilson's alma mater Washington and Lee University in Virginia — that hang directly above the black leather couch, along with a lithograph of the campus's colonnade. Wilson said this was where fellow graduates sat for photographs when they came by the office.

The lower ceilings, however, will necessitate some variations, since it will mean less wall space. The Capitol Dome view, however, will be returning with the new digs.

Meanwhile, the circular nature of congressional real estate market continues. U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., is moving into Wilson's old office in the new year, his relocation necessitated by renovations to his current office building.

"If you have ever been in Joe's office, you will understand my concern for the integrity of the walls after they remove all of the nails holding up his pictures and things," Duncan teased on Facebook.

In all seriousness, Duncan said he liked how the elevators were located directly across the hall.