Marc Baum slipped his hand into his pocket. He pulled on a white art-handler’s glove and picked up a coffee mug from the All Things Oz Museum’s display shelves.

“This is one you won’t see anywhere else. You’ve heard of the FBI?” he said.

Surrounded by donated costumes from various “The Wizard of Oz” productions and obscure Oz merchandise from throughout the 20th century, the mug was nearly unnoticeable, not unlike it would be in its natural habitat — the kitchen cabinet. But this mug was no ordinary mug.

Marc got the mug from his brother-in-law, John Briski, who is a police officer in Hawaii. Briske entered FBI National Academy in 2015 for its 10-week, elite training program for law enforcement agents. In week two, he called his sister and Marc’s wife, Jennifer. He said they’d never guess what the training academy uses as a theme.

Marc guessed “Hawaii Five-0.” He was wrong. It was “The Wizard of Oz.”

When officers first walk into the Quantico headquarters, they stroll down a hallway decorated with paintings of Ronald Reagan, J. Edgar Hoover and the characters from the 1939 film, “The Wizard of Oz.” Trainees complete in physical challenges with names like “Not in Kansas Anymore” and “The Tin Man Trot.” Upon graduation, agents receive a yellow brick with their name engraved on it, and the Oz-emblazoned mug that Briski ended up donating to the museum.

The FBI chose Oz as its theme because “you have to have the hearts, the courage and the brains to get through the training,” Marc said. “It’s absolutely mind-boggling.”

The Wizard of Oz is a staple of American culture so permanent that the FBI National Academy uses its themes to train officers in their elite program. Casey Russell | Senior Staff Writer

“The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” became a smash hit not long after L. Frank Baum penned the original series of 14 books in 1900. They were like the “Harry Potter” series for kids in turn-of-the-century America. Now, 100 years after Baum’s death in 1919 and 80 years since the historic release of the 1939 technicolor film, Baum’s world and core characters are so classic that many around the world can immediately picture what they look like.

That world stems from central New York. Baum was born in Chittenango, just 15 miles from Syracuse University. He later moved to Mattydale, just north of the city where the Syracuse Hancock International Airport now sits. The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, a Fayetteville museum dedicated to preserving the suffragette legacy of Matilda Joslyn Gage, was where Baum met his wife and Matilda’s daughter, Maud Gage Baum.

“The moral of the story is ‘you can see the world and you can do all these wonderful things, but isn’t it nice to go back home?’ I think central New Yorkers get that feeling,” said Marc, a trustee member of The International L. Frank Baum & All Things Oz Historical Foundation, based in Chittenango.

“What else can you name from 1900 that is still around today?” he said.

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Marc Baum, who has no relation to the Oz creator, is one of the primary individuals preserving Oz culture and history through the all-volunteer, The International L. Frank Baum & All Things Oz Historical Foundation. The group started years ago when Clara Houck, the former Chittenango village librarian, organized a small birthday party for Baum, where locals sang “Happy Birthday,” ate cake and ice cream and read part of the first book in the series. It then graduated into the Oz-Fest and became Oz-Stravaganza in 2008.

Always held the first weekend in June, Oz-Stravaganza can attract up to 35,000  people to celebrate “The Wizard of Oz.” Six years ago, the group became a government-recognized 501(c)3 historical foundation and opened its museum, which has a collection of more than 15,000 pieces and saw 18,000 visitors last year.

All Things Oz’s president Dennis Kulis oversees the collection. The 15,000 items are stored in museum archival-grade storage boxes on the second floor above the museum, which used to be a local pharmacy. The original storefront stood at the same time Baum lived in Chittenango.

Kulis said his current favorite is a recent acquisition of an original 1921 Parker Brothers’ board game called “The Wonderful Game of Oz,” complete with all the pieces.

The All Things Oz museum in Chittenango has collected nearly 15,000 pieces of Oz memorabilia, curating exhibits that rotate three times annually. Casey Russell | Senior Staff Writer

The museum and foundation itself is widely known among the Oz community. Oz-Stravaganza has hosted Oz celebrities at its festivities, including “Wicked” composer Stephen Schwartz, “The Wiz” original Broadway star André De Shields, premier Oz historian John Fricke and Margaret Pellegrini, who played a munchkin in the 1939 film.

The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation also pays tribute to Baum’s legacy with a series of displays dedicated to Baum and his wife Maud, who he once met in the Fayetteville restored house and museum. The two fell in love and when Baum proposed to Maud, her mother Matilda forbade her daughter from marrying the failed businessman and actor. Maud threatened to elope and her mother gave in.

As Baum spent more time with Matilda, she realized Baum’s storytelling gift and encouraged him to pursue it.

“She was convinced that that would be his success because he was so good at it,” said Colleen Pilcher, deputy director at The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation.

Though Baum didn’t pen the first Oz novel until after Matilda had died, her first-wave feminism and Progressive Era politics permeated his world. Oz is a matriarchal society, and the most iconic characters — Dorothy, Glinda and the Wicked Witch of the West — are all strong women, reflecting the forward-thinking ideas that surrounded Baum.

“We should credit Matilda for putting those ideas in Frank’s head, not only just to write down his story, but how the world of Oz ended up becoming part of classic literature and is still very classic today,” Pilcher said.

Baum was ahead of his time in both technological and social perspectives. He created a character named Tik-Tok, a man made of copper and mechanical springs, that some scholars recognize as one of the earliest robots. He imagined technological advances that now exist, including a computer news service and artificial body parts. He also introduced one of the first transgender characters in literature with Princess Ozma, who was the ruler of the Oz universe and appeared in every book after the first.

In recent years, some have called out Baum for publishing anti-Native American editorials in a South Dakota newspaper, as well as for playing on negative racial stereotypes in his novels.

More than 100 years later, Baum’s story still remains a relevant player in American pop culture. It’s spawned hundreds of adaptations throughout the 20th and 21th century. In 2015, NBC staged “The Wiz Live!,” a TV special production of the 1975 Broadway musical that retold the story of Oz using black characters and culture — which became a movie in 1978, starring Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. “Wicked” has become the sixth longest running musical of all-time, and has grossed $1.3 billion in profits since opening in 2003.

“When you think about it, it’s really remarkable,” Marc said. “Not a day goes by where somebody doesn’t say ‘click your heels three times,’ or ‘if I only had a brain’ or ‘I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.’ Not in relation to the movie or the books, just in everyday conversation. It’s a part of Americana.”

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Published on April 14, 2019 at 9:34 pm

Contact: [email protected] | @caseymrussell