Magnet collection commemorates St. Clair Shores man's travels

ST. CLAIR SHORES — Traveling across the country is both amazing and educational. One St. Clair Shores man wants to remember all of his travels by making and buying magnets that represent each location.

Ed Stanczak has traveled throughout the country and other places due to his job as an engineer. He traveled at least two times a month while he was still actively working and also went on family trips and excursions. He finds magnets during his travels that represent the place he’s visiting.

“For example, a gravesite or a house or a museum or a national park or something like that,” he said.

Ed worked for companies such as Rockwell International. At Rockwell, he was a troubleshooter for issues that arose in different states. His two trips a month lasted for around 20 years.

When he got his first magnet, he didn’t think it would become a collection that spanned multiple tabletops and multiple boards.

“I started getting souvenirs and then I started collecting magnets of different sizes and then I saw how they interlock nicely,” Ed said.

From there he made display cases on the tabletops of the side tables in his basement. At first, his wife, Sherry Stanczak, suggested he display them in the new bar top he was building.

“I said, ‘How about your magnets?’” Sherry said. “He goes, ‘No, that would make it permanent, but what if I use that table?’ And that was his first one.”

The first table he used had a wicker bottom and he took out the wicker piece to replace it with plywood and a sheet of metal with a magnetic top. The table is covered with a sheet of glass and materials to keep it in place.

“They actually ended up fitting exactly right,” Ed said. “It just happened to be the case.”

The magnets in the table feature all of the national parks, battlefields or otherwise, he’s visited over the years.

Now retired, Ed has been collecting magnets for around 35 years. He has made several tables and boards filled to the brim with magnets of his travels. This includes a board filled with magnets of different celebrities, historical figures and others. The magnets of famous faces represent the places he visited related to them. He’s visited battle sites, homesteads and museums.

In his garage also hangs a magnet board featuring all the places in Michigan he’s visited, including his children’s houses.

Ed and Sherry have three grandchildren, and Ed made a magnet featuring all three of them. He said he makes the magnets by taking a photo of a location and gives them to a vendor that specializes in personalized magnets.

Some of the magnets he bought online. After he went on a trip to Pinnacles National Park in California, he later bought a magnet.

“I went to Pinnacles, that’s in California, and I couldn’t get a magnet,” Ed said. “But when I came home, I found a website that sold magnets from national park sites. So that’s another way.”

Ed said that the most interesting place he visited was Alaska and that on a few of his trips he went up to Prudhoe Bay for business. He flew into the city of Fairbanks for his stay.

“They supply equipment to the oil fields, and we use that as a cold weather site to check out how equipment lasted in an arctic kind of environment,” Ed said.

Ed also said he’s visited Alaska several other times over the years, and he calls it his No. 1.

Sherry thought it was cool that Ed brought home magnets from his travels.

“And when he thought about that, I thought that was a great idea,” Sherry said. “I love to decorate, and I thought that was the perfect combination of both of us.”