The Wizard of Oz is a movie that I have seen way too many times, but one that brings up happy memories of my childhood. My Grandma always watched it with me.
I always thought that Judy Garland was mesmerizing as Dorothy and loved the dress she wore. One of the dresses that Garland had worn was gifted to the Catholic University of America in 1972, by Mercedes McCambridge, had gone missing.
Now if you want to talk about why you need to keep things organized and to purge junk often, this would be a case for why.
It’s been almost 50 years since the dress went missing, but while Matt Ripa, a lecturer at the University, was cleaning out a space, guess what he found? If you guessed the dress, you would be correct.
“I had looked in our archives, storage closets, etc. to no avail. I assumed it was a tall tale,” he said in a press release. Like so many, he assumed that it was a myth that the dress was in the Hartke building, where it had long been rumored to be.
But it wasn’t a myth? It was found in a trash bag on top of the faculty mailboxes.
So many things that we could say here, but I think we’re all thinking the same thing. Who would be stupid enough to put a priceless dress in a trashbag?
“I was curious what was inside and opened the trash bag and inside was a shoebox and inside the shoe box was the dress,” Matt continued in the release. “I couldn’t believe it. Needless to say, I have found many interesting things in the Hartke during my time at CUA, but I think this one takes the cake.”
“Dorothy’s ‘Wizard of Oz’ dress, once the province of myth, is now a real object,” the university said. “It can now be preserved in proper storage in a temperature- and humidity-controlled environment so that hopefully, for many more years, it can be a source of ‘hope, strength, and courage’ for Catholic University students.”
This is not the first time renovations at the University have uncovered things that really should have been kept track of. In 2010, Bishop David M. O’Connell, then-president of the University, found a Rembrandt etching in a restroom closet in his residence.
Someone hire The Home Edit for this University, because who knows what else they have hidden in a trash bag or a closet.
We’re glad it was found and lets home that it teaches us all to remain organized and keep things where they are supposed to be.
