Corvettes, Cadillacs And Classic "big Dolls" Clothing In Kearney | Local News

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Purdy poses with a collection of vintage hats owned by the late Carol Cope.

The detailed beading and buttons on the back of this gown are stunning. Its fishtail skirt gently brushes the floor.

This deep burgundy velvet dress with a jeweled belt and neck accent, as well as the fur muff and headband, date back to the late 1800s. They were donated to the Classic Car Collection.

KEARNEY —If you thought vintage cars were the only fascinating relics inside Kearney's Classic Car Collection, you haven’t walked through the museum with Jackie Purdy.

Displayed among those 200 automobiles are a poodle skirt from the ‘50s, a flapper dress from the ‘20s, a furry white muff and an American Red Cross volunteer’s uniform from the 1950s.

Nearly all came from Purdy’s closet. Most were made by her late mother. A few came from estate sales and thrift stores. Purdy lovingly dresses the museum’s 15 mannequins in costumes appropriate for the cars that surround them.

“I’ve always been interested in fashion because my mother made most of my clothes,” Purdy said. “Because she always dressed me so well, I thought I could dress the mannequins.”

This dress and matching hat were found inside the trunk of a car that had never been opened since it arrived at the museum 12 years ago.

She calls the mannequins her “big dolls.” She has even named them. “I tell the men here, ‘You be careful when you move the mannequins,’” she said.

Purdy visits the museum at least once a week to keep a grandmotherly eye on her big dolls. “They move cars constantly, so sometimes I have to come out and straighten up the mannequins,” she said.

She changes the outfits every six months or so, “but if we get something new in, or find something I think would work, I can make changes.”

The museum displays more than 60 cars on loan, and displays change frequently, so Purdy moves the mannequins or changes their outfits as needed.

Purdy has been on the board of the Classic Car Collection ever since it opened in 2011. When Bernie and Janice Taulborg of Elkhorn donated 131 vehicles to Kearney, about 15 mannequins came with them, and Purdy volunteered to dress them. The board gave her its blessing, and she’s been at it ever since.

“Jackie is a saint,” Brad Kernick, a board member, said.

Jackie Purdy wore this dress in the 1950s when she volunteered at the American Red Cross blood bank.

Not long ago, a museum volunteer opened the trunk of one of the Taulborgs’ cars for the first time since it arrived at the museum 11 years ago. Inside, he found three suitcases. All were empty except for one, which contained a unique flapper dress and matching hat in a soft salmon shade. “That hat and that dress were special to someone who owned that car,” Purdy said.

She put it on a mannequin and added one of her late mother’s necklaces that matched the dress perfectly. She placed the mannequin beside a Cadillac. “It was a sparkly dress. That sparkly dress needed to be by that Cadillac,” Purdy said.

Purdy owes it all to her mother, Helen Miller, who was one of 16 children — 10 girls and six boys — born to a farm family in Bancroft, Kansas. Purdy was born in 1932 to Helen and her mechanic husband in Bern, Kansas. They moved to Nebraska in the 1940s.

Helen had left high school after 11th grade. She had never had a sewing lesson, but she had an innate gift for making clothing. She sold fabric and made wedding veils at Dot’s Fabric in Kearney. She made green uniforms for fellow employees when she worked at a bank in Cairo.

Purdy made this headpiece with the feather to match the tan flapper dress made by her mother.

Most of all, she loved making clothing for Purdy, her only child. She started with an old treadle sewing machine but replaced it as the years passed. She dressed Purdy in beautiful outfits, coats and dresses. She also made Barbie doll dresses for Lee, her granddaughter, also Purdy’s daughter. “I don’t think my mother made many things for herself,” Purdy said.

Helen made formal gowns for Purdy, too, including those that Purdy wore to fancy events with her husband Ken, who was a Shriner and an Elk. “If I needed a dress that was special and different, I would find the pattern and the material, and she would whip it up for me,” Purdy said.

“You can’t find that kind of fabric today in fabric shops. There aren’t too many at-home seamstresses, either. I wanted one-of-a-kind, and I wanted it to fit nicely. I always liked what she made,” Purdy said. “I always liked fashion. I guess I was in the right place at the right time.”

Helen lived to be 90 years old, and Purdy still has quite a few of the dresses she made hanging in garment bags. “I tried to keep the special ones, especially long formals because I can use them out here,” she said.

This colorful farm girl turns into a skier in the winter, when Jackie Purdy outfits her in a wool ski suit.

Purdy, a 1950 graduate of Kearney High School, keeps plastic bins stocked with hats, wigs and other accessories inside a small closet at the Classic Car Collection. “I get wigs at estate sales. People don’t want them,” she said.

“Brad (Kernick) has brought in several things that are hanging in that closet. I haven’t used them all yet, but you never know,” she added.

A few pieces in the display are from notable people in Kearney. Vintage hats belonged to the late Carol Cope. A suit belonged to the late Ron Cope. Saddle shoes from the closet of the late Yvonne Deyle Barth adorn the feet of the poodle-skirted teenager at the front of the museum. Kernick found the poodle skirt.

Every outfit has a story, such as the pale blue dress Purdy wore as a blood bank volunteer at the American Red Cross in Kearney. “I would just sit at the typewriter wearing that dress,” she said. “Carol Cope was also a volunteer, but her dress was gray.”

The saddle shoes on this poodle-skirted mannequin came from the late Yvonne Deyle Barth. Brad Kernick, Classic Car Collection board member, purchased the skirt.

If a desired piece isn’t hanging in her closet, Purdy scours estate sales and thrift stores. At Goodwill, she found the orange striped shirt worn by Opie, a small boy carrying a fishing rod near a car from the “Mayberry R.F.D.” era. Also at a thrift shop, she found the outfit for a mannequin in the ticket booth from Kearney’s old drive-in theater.

From a friend, Purdy acquired an elegant black dress that belonged to that friend’s great-grandmother. “She was cleaning closets and didn’t want to throw anything away,” Purdy said.

While she does not accept donations, Purdy has gotten boys’ clothing from a friend who still has her grown son’s childhood clothing. Purdy dressed a mannequin as a newspaper carrier by cutting up a pair of pants she’d purchased at Goodwill and adding a flat hat and a vest.

Jackie Purdy displays a formal gown that her mother made for her to wear to a gala event in Kearney years ago.

She changes mannequins’ attire for the seasons, too. In the summer, one blonde mannequin is carrying a basket of flowers. In the winter, she wears a wool snowsuit, and her blond hair is woven into one solitary braid. A mannequin in bib overalls gets a flannel hat with ear flaps when winter arrives.

As Purdy guided a visitor around the collection last week, her eyes sparkled as she held up a melon-colored dress, a deep green fully-lined coat and a sapphire-blue dress that Jackie Kennedy might have donned in the early ‘60s. Her mother made all of those pieces.

“Attitudes have changed,” she said, a bit wistfully. “People don’t dress up much anymore.”

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Late Tuesday evening, the Kearney Police Department notified troopers that the subject of an ongoing narcotics investigation may be traveling on Interstate 80.

Officers located approximately four ounces of suspected methamphetamine, fentanyl, various prescription pills, drug paraphernalia and cash indicative of narcotics sales and distribution.

He was last seen wearing a white T-shirt, jeans, cowboys boots and was carrying a larger boom box-style radio.

The fire remains under investigation, but it has been ruled accidental.

With good time, he could be eligible for parole in September 2025, and possibly discharged in March 2030.

The school bus was transporting the Cozad High School girls’ softball team. There were 12 students and four adults on the bus.

He was arrested on the first charge Aug. 10, posted bond and was arrested on the second set of charges on Sept. 1.

Although officers may enforce any observed violations in priority enforcement zones, they will be watching for traffic signal violations, speeding, failure to yield and other violations.