GALION — Ray and Nancy Cole are surrounded by dummies. They like it that way.
The Galion couple have a home full of mannequins. A bride and groom in one corner of the living room, Marilyn Monroe decked out in another. Lifelike figures in all shapes and sizes that they have collected and dressed for years.
Call them conversation pieces.
“I can’t even remember where we got half of them,” Nancy Cole said matter-of-factly. “When first-timers come to the house, they usually jump back and say, ‘Oh, I thought that was a real person there,’ and I just say, ‘say hi to them.’”
The Coles got the idea to buy a mannequin about 18 years ago after they bought a 1940 Chevy Deluxe. Their neighbors, Joe and Bev Moss, had one in the back seat of their 1947 Dodge, an attention-getter at car shows. They figured their sedan could use one too.
Their first mannequin came from a collector in Mt. Vernon. A brown-eyed beauty dressed in a black shirt and heels. The perfect passenger for their four-door special, who traveled with them to shows as far away as Tennessee, getting plenty of double-takes along the way.
“I don’t really know why per say we got started on it,” said Ray Cole, a Galion native. “It was just something that intrigued me. It was fun to take them to car shows. And then it kind of took off from there.”
Soon they were decorating their two-story home with the full-sized fiberglass figures, most of which come in seven pieces. Assembling them, clothing them and positioning them on a base and rod, just like they would be displayed in department stores.
A few were actually old props from the former Galion Jaycees’ Haunted House. One originated in Disneyland – a female with long blonde hair which the Coles dressed in a two-piece bathing suit and laid on a trailer bed for a lengthy trip to Florida.
The wedding couple are clearly dressed for their special day – he in a black tuxedo, cummerbund and top hat, his brown-haired bride looking radiant in an antique lace wedding gown, a bouquet of red roses in her left arm.
The smallest doll, “Chloe,” sits in a high chair in the kitchen – the same oak high chair Cole used as a child more than 80 years ago. On the nearby porch, a young woman with her legs crossed looks comfortable in a small rocking chair next to the window.
“Once I find something to put on them, I leave it on most generally,” said Nancy Cole, the chief costume designer. “It’s whatever I can find at Goodwill, Walmart or wherever. Anything that will work and looks good.”
Her husband, a retired painter and wallpaper hanger in town, has had to repair a few of their acquisitions over the years. He made a new finger for one out of putty, which he sanded and painted. He’s also a pro at touching up facial features.
For their masked Marilyn Monroe mannequin, Cole rigged a cast iron floor register to blow air up her white cocktail dress. Triggered by motion, it simulated the actress’s iconic subway grate scene from the 1955 film “The Seven Year Itch.”
The Coles gave away the mask from one mannequin that used to greet people at the back door – a gruesome guy with a cigar butt sticking out of his mouth and a BB gun in tow. It went to an Amish man who was putting a new roof on their house.
“He said when he was done, ‘will you sell that to me?’ and I said, ‘Heck no, I’ll give it to you,’” Nancy Cole recalled.
The pair also donated a little lady to the Galion Historical Society for display in their museum and another to the Galion Community Theatre. That tall brunette peered through the theatre’s ticket booth window uptown for years.
Because the Coles, after all this time, are still moved by mannequins.
“We’ve just kept them,” Nancy Cole said. “They startle some people when they come in, but they’re our décor.”
