SHERWOOD, Ark. (UATV)–The heart of Razorback country is almost 200 miles away from Fayetteville, depending on who you ask.
Retired Sherwood resident Gayle Holmes will tell you it’s in his town, where his house has absorbed a full-on Razorback museum.
“I think the official name I made, set it one time was Holmes Hog Museum,” he said. “Of course like any museum, we have a guest registry and anybody that comes up here to visit I have them sign and that would include you.”
You’ll find footballs signed by every football and basketball coach, a whole wall lined with trinkets of every shape and size, and Razorback memorabilia you simply don’t come across every day.
“Really to digest everything in here, you’d probably have to stay an hour, an hour and a half, two hours to soak it all up,” Holmes said.
Fake Razorback nails?
“There’s the fingernails. You don’t wear those do you?” he asked.
There’s even hand-made items that’ve been seen on a national scale.
“We went over to ABC Good Morning America one morning. Started getting text messages from folks back home that said we just saw you on TV,” Holmes shared.
It all started when Holmes retired and brought the Razorback stuff he’d been collecting at his desk at work home with him.
“It had a lot of stuff in it, and I was going oh no when he retires he’s gonna bring all that home,” his wife said.
“So that’s the yearbooks,” Holmes continued.
In his upstairs space he began bringing in more and adding to the collection.
“Since 1898, there’s a hundred and eighteen yearbooks and I have all but nine of them,” he said.
A Razorback fan by heart, even when he was scoring touchdowns for another school in the same state.
He said, “I went to school at Conway, and was an U-C-S-C-A Bear back in those days, but I was still a Hog fan.”
Now living out a Razorback fan’s wildest dreams, he said he’s been to 90 straight football games, home and away.
An adventure making the Holmes’ upstairs worth more than a pretty penny.
“And I think it comes out to that amount right there,” he said, pointing to a figure over $50,000.
So when Holmes can no longer take care of his collection, it will all go to his grandson, Blake.
“You can give my mom anything else, give me this house with everything in it and I’ll be okay,” Blake said.
So, Sherwood will be home to the Holmes Hog Museum for a whole new generation.
Story by UATV Reporters Andrew Epperson and Shane White