|
|
Welcome to: www.olympicsource.org Celebrating our 28th Year, as always we share our Olympic experiences and pictures of our Memorabilia with people of the United States and the entire World. Eric Nash Owner, CEO and Executive Director
The International Sports Hall of Fame and Olympic Museum, was founded in January 1980 by Eric Nash with the help of his wife Heidi and also the Nash Corporation, which at the time owned a chain of gift stores in large hotels in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Francisco and Disneyland and were the official distributors of the LAOOC pin licensee of the 1984 Olympics, Ooh La La of Los Angeles. Being a collector of Olympic artifacts since the Winter and Summer Olympics of 1936 in Germany and with a desire to show and share the collection with the general public, we decided to open an Olympic Museum next to one of our Hotel Stores in Orange County, which we were able to do in January 1980, at the time of the Lake Placid Winter Olympics and while the LAOOC was preparing for the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics. Our museum was then the only Public International Olympic Museum in the United States and is still to this day the only Olympic Museum of all Olympics of the modern era in the USA. The museum remained in Southern California for ten years, until some of our store leases expired and with the 1984 pin fever over and an enormous raise of the rent, it was not feasible for us to renew the ten year lease and pay high rent. Since we own a three story 6,700 sq ft building on the Oregon Coast in Depoe Bay between Newport and Lincoln City facing the Pacific Ocean, on one of the most beautiful natural spots and settings in this country, we decided to sell our gift stores and retire early and move our museum and Olympic collection dating from 1896 to the present, to Oregon and travel while we still are healthy and can have fun and be active during our travels and later enjoy our remaining years quietly in our home, where we enjoy a semi retired life, spend a couple of hours daily at the beautiful local beaches, find agates and fossils and spend the rest of the day in the museum which is open by appointment only, until we can make plans for the future of the museum. In 2002, we made a partnership with a group of people from Nevada where we spend winters and opened a small annex of our Oregon museum in Las Vegas and purchased a lot of Olympic Torches, Medals and many other artifacts. But as it turned out we could not find a good, nor honest manager and between bad management and the extremely high rent, we decided to end the partnership and closed the museum and displays on my 80th birthday, because it was interfering with my other activities and travels and eventually we will make photos and lists of all the items and they will eventually be sold or auctioned by us and listed on our website under Open Auctions. Admission to the museum in California was free with purchase of the 1984 Olympic pins, which attracted a lot of people and we sold many pins and pin sets the ten years we were in business, especially at the time of the Olympics. The museum was self supporting with the income from admissions, memberships, donations, gift store, etc. and was open every day, including weekends, managed by us, but after we moved to Oregon and now being in my eighties and considering retirement, I would like to make it available to a well known and reliable organization, foundation, or museum, involved and dedicated to Sports and the Olympics, which would be interested in managing and support the museum, which easily could be made into a nationwide success and attraction if it were in the right location, which it is not at the present time and be well managed, which I would help to do as long as possible. The museum has one of the finest Olympic artifact collections worldwide with most items in extra fine, museum quality condition, which nowadays is very hard to find, as items in such condition are getting very scarce and hard to find. A large Corporation could easily use the expenses as a tax write off, get a lot of benefits from it and make their name be known everywhere. In case if we don't find anyone interested in the museum, the items will eventually be sold or auctioned, because my children, which were born in this country and did not have the same disciplined upbringing in sports that I have had in Austria from a family that was active and involved in sports during the first years of my life and later by playing for one of the finest Football clubs in the world, River Plate. My two children just did not want to and do not have the same commitment for Sport and the Olympics that I was lucky to have had. It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to this website, which is about Olympic History, Memorabilia, Artifacts and myself, which I especially did for some friends and relatives I have in Austria and even more so in South America, where I spent the best years of my life. Although I was born in Austria, my real friendships were made during the years I spent in Argentina and Bolivia, of which many are not with us anymore, because of illness or old age and some, undeservedly being accused of political involvement like myself, although I was never in my life ever interested or involved in anything political during the Peron years when I lived in Buenos Aires. But as for my friends and team mates that are still with us, this website and pictures are for them as well as the people of the entire world. This being the website of my Olympic Museum, it will only be about the wonderful years I was involved in sports playing Football, especially the years I played in Argentina from age 16 to 29 in three divisions and traveling with our first team during summers, replacing our top players from first division, although I played as an amateur in second division, playing against first division clubs all over the world and this website is also about Olympics I was directly involved in as an athlete, plus the ones I attended. As most museums, there is a Gift Store that offers Olympic memorabilia, which can get more valuable from year to year and many other collectables. The Museum Store also sells Olympic pins and memorabilia from several Olympics that the museum has duplicate, items on consignment and pins I collected for over seventy three years by attending Olympics since 1936. Going through three emigrations and three name changes, having seen political turmoil, revolutions, military coups, governments changes from one day to the next for satisfaction and greed of power to rule, with no assurance of safety for the public, as I have witnessed in my native Austria and later in Bolivia and Argentina, which cannot be told in just a few simple words, but only by a book which I may write some day, having experienced rewards and honor in sports and later the opposite because of changes in government although I have never been interested or knowledgeable about politics. In 1937, my parents and I left Austria for political reasons and in 1955, I had to do the same in Argentina, leaving my Football Trophies, Memoirs and Olympic memorabilia in Buenos Aires, which, going back later and searching for them, could not find, nor my friends, I left them with. In 1955, when I arrived in the United States, I thought I could play or coach Soccer for an American club and get paid, but since it was not a professional Sport in this country in 1955, I had to settle for a job, which was no problem with my college background and other than playing Tennis and other sports for fun, Soccer was over for me. I kept going to the Olympics and as always had a good time seeing the events and collecting memorabilia for my collection. As I mentioned above, this Website is mainly about Sports, the Olympics I attended and my collection, which have been a large part of my life and now, in my eighties and suffering from old injuries, I may not be able to attend many Olympics anymore and instead entertain myself writing about the ones I have attended and participated. The Olympics that were dearest to me were the first two in 1936 and of course the ones of 1948 and 1952, for which I qualified and also the ones I was honored to be a Torchbearer and carry the Olympic Flame. For that, see "My Olympics" and "The Olympic Flame". E-mail checked daily at: enash327@yahoo.com or weekly at: museum@olympicsource.org Telephone: Summer: 541-765-2923, Winter: 702-346-1776 |
