For Mayme Faulk, a Grand Pioneer for the 2016 Irrigation Festival, the term “old hat” has new meaning.

For one, Sequim’s annual celebration of irrigation is something Faulk is quite familiar with.

At 85 years, she’s a fourth-generation Sequim native and her family living in the

Sequim and Blyn areas dates back to her great-grandparents. An Irrigation Festival princess twice (1945 and 1948), Faulk has the unique honor of holding a second-generation Grand Pioneer title during the this year’s festival. Her mother, Dorothy (Delaney) Hendrickson, was the 1927 festival queen and a Grand Pioneer in 1986.

Over the years Faulk and family members have had occasion to collect the swag — in the form of buttons and pins — that have come each year since the late 1940s. But she says she never really put much thought into gathering a complete collection, particularly in 1948, the first year she was princess and the first year the buttons appeared.

“I don’t know why I didn’t keep one (of the buttons),” Faulk says.

Answers her daughter, Phyllis Meyer, “You were 17.”

That’s not a problem now. Thanks to some hardcore collecting that started with Faulk’s brother-in-law Loris Victor Crosasso, Faulk and Meyer are now in possession of a nearly complete Irrigation Festival button and pin collection.

That’s nearly, for the pair still are missing the 1957 button and still are gathering a few of the pins from recent years.

And then there’s that old hat from 1953. In their research, Faulk and Meyer found that the festival organizers skipped buttons for that year in lieu of a straw hat.

What they have, passed down through the years in the family, are a pair of straw hats covered in buttons, with “Sequim Irrigation Festival” stenciled on them. But are they the official festival hats from 1953? They’re not sure.

They also have an old, undated Port Angeles Evening News photo of Crosasso and a fellow named Monte Roberson wearing straw hats and pins. Crosasso lived in Seattle but would catch a ferry and ride a bicycle three-and-a-half hours to get into Sequim in time for the grand parade.

Crosasso — who moved to the United States from Italy in 1951 — married Phyllis Messenger in 1954, then moved to Seattle and worked for Boeing for a number of years.

He commonly made the bike trek to Sequim for the annual parade, Faulk says.

“We don’t know how long he did this (collecting),” she says.

When Crosasso died in 1999, the button collection and hats wound up in Meyer’s possession.

Between the two, Faulk and Meyer saw they had nearly each button and pin the festival produced through the years.

“I had a jarful of these pins, nothing to do with them,” Faulk says.

Thanks to the help and guidance of some other longtime Sequim residents such as Bonnie McInnes, the mother-daughter pair have the near-complete collection.

“I knew what the oldest pin was,” Meyer says. “I’m giving it to her for the duration of her (reign).”

The collection also will be on display during the First Friday Art Walk on May 6 at the Sequim Museum, 175 W. Cedar St.

A little back story

Faulk lived in the Zaccardo House in Blyn from ages 6-20 and then again from 1955-2005. She raised seven children there. She now has nine grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

For work, Faulk spent almost 20 years at Southwoods as a clerk and later its bookkeeper before the store closed. She went on to work as an accountant for 10 years and worked another five years during tax seasons.

“I get asked all the time what it was like (back then),” Faulk says. “We had a theater, a bakery, two drugstores, two groceries. It was only two blocks, but it was all we needed.”

In her time now, Faulk lives near downtown Sequim and enjoys sewing, knitting, reading, gardening and spending time outside.

The Sequim Irrigation Festival and Sequim Pioneer Association announced Faulk and William Blank as Grand Pioneers, along with Honorary Pioneers Milton Lynch and Jo Robb. They’ll help represent Sequim at the 121st festival running May 6-15, with the theme, “Looking to the Future Through the Past.”

Says Faulk, “When they told me, I was shocked.”

Button, pins, pageantry

While the Irrigation Festival Pageant is now an annual tradition, Faulk recalls a different way of selecting the festival court in her day: Ballots were passed out to students and five youths were selected to run for the court.

The one who sold the most buttons got to be queen.

She was selected princess in 1945 and 1948.

In 1945, the court didn’t even have a float, Faulk says, and in 1948 the cost of the “float” was $7.50 worth of crepe paper and donated cedar boughs to help cover the back of the donated flatbed truck.

From 1948-1952, the American Legion sponsored buttons for the then two-day Irrigation Festival; its insignia is featured on the first five. The very first was a 1.5-inch-diameter pin-on with no year stamped, printed with only “53rd annual Irrigation Festival” to mark the year.

Buttons featured stamped numbers as part of a prize give-away program that ran through 1967, according to a 1979 festival brochure.

In 1953, sponsorship changed from the American Legion to the Sequim Commercial Club, a cross-section of community members. The 1979 brochure features a picture of the 1953 queen Barbara Beverage (Andrew) with the hat that was substituted, albeit briefly, for buttons.

The hat craze faded quickly and buttons came back into style, continuing their use as a festival fundraiser.

Larger-sized button started up in 1954.

In the mid-1950s, the festival grew to a three-day festival. Button colors changed from year to year but retained a prize number on front, a chance to receive prizes donated by local merchants.

In 1959, when the festival extended to four days, festival organizers added a 1.25-inch, child-sized button.

Photos started to appear on Irrigation Festival buttons in 1960, from black and white in 1960 to red-on-white in 1961.

In 1962, the festival ended traditional designs and went to a simple sun logo and featured words, “Sunshine Belt.”

In 1967, festival buttons dropped the raffle numbers; that reappeared in 1971 but were dropped thereafter.

The 1968 button lacked printing of both the year and festival number; Faulk and Meyer relied on McInnes to help fill in that button for their collection.

Since then, buttons have featured everything from sailboats to crabs to cows to the New Dungeness Light Station, scenic Sequim scenes and even U.S. Highway 101 (“101 on 101” during the 101st festival).

In 1982, the festival added pins.

Meyer, who served as a royalty mom for seven years, says her favorite button/pin design is 2003, when she came up with the theme, “A berry, berry fine place to be.”

“I was thinking about all of our berry farms,” she says. “We won nearly every grand sweepstakes we entered.”

A lot of folks like the 105th Irrigation Festival design back in 2000, Meyer says, one that features flames coming off a bright, fiery sun.

“There’s something different, something unique about most of them,” Meyer says. “Probably lots of stories behind them, too.”