Collector Keeps Cards, Cars, Wire, but He Goes Buggy for Butterflies

Norman Campbell has a knack for collecting things--cars, antiques, barbed wire, post cards and especially butterflies. Since his fancy for flying insects began more than 50 years ago, he has traveled extensively in South and Central America and throughout the United States in pursuit of moths and butterflies.

Some of his most prized specimens, including iridescent blue morphos from Brazil and Atlas moths with 10-inch wingspans, hang in ornate frames on the walls of his Huntington Beach home. Hundreds of others are stored in glass-fronted cases in his garage. Some of the specimens, still in perfect condition, date back to his childhood.

Campbell, a retired pediatrician, developed many of his own techniques for mounting and preserving the insects he collects. He will share some of his secrets in a four-session workshop that begins today and continues each Saturday in March at the Museum of Natural History and Science in Newport Beach. For information, call (714) 640-7120.

Campbell’s comments are taken from an interview with Times staff writer Rick VanderKnyff.

I got involved in this when I lived in Nebraska and Wyoming. My brother was in college and had to make a butterfly collection. This was about 1933.

We lived in Hastings, Neb., and he lived in Lincoln. He came home and wanted some help. I was 13 years old then so I helped, and I really got hooked on it. I’d get up in the morning at daybreak--I made all my own nets and everything--and I had a bicycle, and I’d leave home every morning and I wouldn’t come home until dark.

It was a small town, about 12,000 people, and there were two or three parks, and I guess you could say I lived, ate and slept bugs.

I got another kid involved with it who lived across the railroad tracks. Of course we couldn’t afford Riker mounts (a standard setting sold in stores for displaying insect collections) to put our butterflies in, so . . . we made our own frames and painted them black, and that worked great.

I collected until about 1937, when I came to California, and then I quit. I gave it up totally: I didn’t have anything to do with it, and I gave my collection away. I finished high school out here, I went to college out here and medical school. I graduated from Loma Linda in 1945.

I got married in 1950, and in 1965 we went on a trip to Florida. Took my wife and all three kids and flew to Atlanta, borrowed my sister’s car, and we went down the west coast of Florida and up the East Coast. We got down to St. Petersburg, and I saw all these Palamedes swallowtails (butterflies)--and when I was a kid I always thought how great it would be to have those in my collection. I never had them, and here I was catching them in the radiator of my car.

So when we got to St. Petersburg I went over and bought two nylon curtains in the dime store, and I got me some wire and two bamboo poles, and I got me some needle and thread, and I went in the restroom of the motel and I sat in there and made up two nets.

I began to get about as deeply involved in it as I was before. Then the kid that I had given my collection to gave back what was left of it plus some of what he had collected. And they were all in these Riker mounts, so I took them out and remounted them.

I had 500 frames made up, and I’ve given almost all 500 away. What I have left is what’s up there (on the wall). The rest I gave away as gifts. They make great wedding gifts. I’ve had people say, “I’ll invite you to my wedding if you give me one of those bugs.” You know what a name-dropper is? Well, I’ve made up a display for Chuck Norris’ home. He’s my wife’s nephew.

I’m not only involved in bugs. I collect barbed wire. I collect post cards--I’ve got about 3,000. Then I had an aunt that had a lot of my grandparents’ things, so I’ve got a lot of pretty nice antiques.

If I had any money, I’d go broke on cars. I’ve got the (1939) Buick and the two Mustangs. I’ve got a ’56 T-bird sitting in the garage that I bought 22 years ago for $600.

But these (butterflies) are the main interest in my life. This other stuff is all sidelines.

A lot of times people think it’s really easy to go out there and catch these butterflies. We were in Honduras, and when I travel I always take two or three nets with me because I figure somebody might be interested. Pretty soon the guide who was showing us around wanted to know if he could catch some. So he took one of the nets, but of course he couldn’t catch anything because they’re not that easy to catch.

And when it comes to pinning them out, it takes a good while to get to where you can do it.

When I’m trying to catch something, an insect or a butterfly, and I’m waiting or hoping that it will land or come down, when I catch it my hands start shaking. If I’ve caught something I’m really excited about, I get shaking so bad I can hardly get it in the package.

From time to time, I’ve wondered why is it that I do this. I think it’s the fact that it’s something nobody else does. It gives me something that I know more about than most other people that I run into. Whenever I have a captive audience, I make them look at my bugs.

Reflections showcases people from the county who have an interesting life story and gives them an opportunity to tell it in their own words.