Slippery Rock Gazette

Photos Supplied Courtesy Bryant and Edna Washburn

Bryant and Edna Washburn have been collecting fossils, rocks, and minerals for more than 60 years and estimate they have more than 10,000 pieces in their collection. They also like to share their love of rocks and minerals with others – especially children – and have played host to thousands of visitors over the last two decades.

“School children have been coming here for field trips for 22 years,” said Edna, “It’s their favorite field trip. As soon as school starts each year, the children will start asking when the field trip will happen.”

In addition to showing the children the collection, they give each two or three bags of rocks to take home with them, and Bryant makes a request. He asks each one to promise him they will go home that day and give their parents a hug and tell them “I love you.”

Bryant and Edna have been married for 66 years and have been hunting for fossils and rocks almost as long. They met when Bryant was working at a service station after serving six years during World War II.

“I had to walk by the service station where he was working every day to get to work and he would see me,” Edna said. “He told his friends, ‘That’s the girl I’m going to marry someday. I just need to figure out how to meet her.’”

Eventually they met on a blind date and were soon married. They adopted a son, who has passed away. Bryant was a manager at a tire store in Richfield for 32 years, but collecting petrified wood and rocks had always been a hobby. Edna didn’t originally have an interest in rocks but “you either fight them or join them,” she said.

“We spent many years camping out under the stars and hunting for rocks. We really roughed it, but we enjoyed it.”

After Bryant retired they turned their hobby into a business finding, buying, and trading rocks and minerals. Long ago their car had to move from the garage to the street so they could have a place to collect the prizes for their home museum. The workshop outside contains Bryant’s saws, tumblers, and other tools where he cuts and polishes many of the pieces they collect.

First, he cuts the piece using one of his diamond-blade saws, which run from 18 inches up to 34 inches. He uses a grinder to get rid of any burrs caused by the saw, then places the piece in cat litter for up to two days to draw out all the oil.

“We buy more cat litter than anyone in Richfield,” Bryant said.

Then he uses a tumbler or cabochon unit with different grit sizes and an angle grinder for the polishing. Bryant said he learned it all by experimenting to find out what works best for him.

His favorite to work with is petrified wood, which requires sturdy tools because it is harder than granite. It forms when a material like volcanic ash or lava washed over the wood. This material kept the oxygen out so it didn’t decay, but instead slowly turned to mineral or stone. The vivid and varied colors of petrified wood are caused by the presence of different minerals in the wood.

The Washburns have petrified wood from Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, Utah, and several other places and most of the pieces are millions of years old.

The Washburn’s museum is home to many other interesting specimens as well, such as glittering geodes, septarian nodules full of jagged cracks, white coral, ammonite fossils that look like ancient snails, agate with fine colorful lines, and even coprolite – fossilized dinosaur feces.

Bryant said he used to get up at 5:00 each morning to work on his pieces. At 90, he doesn’t get up that early any more, but he still spends time in his workshop. Behind the house are tables full of stones waiting to be cut and polished.

“There’s still lots of work to do for a 90-year-old,” Edna said with a laugh.

One of the things the Washburns like best about their collection is sharing it with children. They’ve enjoyed the yearly field trips – which bring as many as 175 second graders into their home at once, along with their teachers and chaperones – but last year they decided to make a change.

“It has been so rewarding for us, but last year we decided we were too old to do it any more,” said Edna, who is 85. “At least I am; he probably wouldn’t ever feel too old for that.”

Instead of having the children come to them, the Washburns decided to take a large portion of their collection to the children. Ashman Elementary School, located just around the corner from their Washburn museum, was planning to remodel, so Bryant and Edna talked to them about including space for a display of some of their best geologic pieces. The school was delighted and in January 2011 opened the new display, which includes 17 cases donated by the Washburns.

The display has more than 600 specimens of fossils, rocks, petrified wood, and minerals from 23 countries (including Guam, the Philippines, and Saudi Arabia), 26 states, the Red Sea, the North Sea, and the Pacific Ocean. There’s also a special room with a black light for the fluorescent mineral display of “Fairyland Express.” This display has a miniature village, skating pond, and other buildings, as well as a train running through it. When the overhead light goes off and the ultraviolet light goes on, the minerals (mostly franklinite from Franklin, N.J.) glow in a multitude of vibrant colors.

The Washburn’s generosity spills into other areas as well. Bryant is particularly interested in preserving the stories of World War II veterans. Three years ago they hosted a reunion of veterans and their families and more than 100 people came. They asked everyone to bring a story and a photograph, which the Washburns put into a booklet called “Heroes of World War II.” It ended up being over 300 pages and was so popular, they created two more volumes telling the stories of more than 400 veterans.

The Washburns don’t have much of a yard anymore in front of their little home and rock museum. Instead they have a rock and petrified wood garden. In that garden is a large petrified wooden log from Arizona that they’ve had for 20 years. It’s brightly colored and covered with lichen.

“I guess the elements were just right because last year up popped a cactus out of that 220 million year old log,” said Edna. “How long had those seeds been laying dormant? Maybe millions of years? The cactus now has five shoots on it. It survived our cold winter. What a story it could tell!”

Much like the Washburns themselves.