Anderson collection from Pateros: Butterfly collection departs Rosalia after long stay in care of Jim Nebel

One of James Nebel’s last wishes was to donate the Anderson-Nebel Butterfly Collection to WSU.

In 1988 while in Redmond, Wash., the late James Nebel of Rosalia ran into a long-time friend, Alice Anderson Hezel. The Anderson family of Pateros, and Jim Nebel's family were friends and neighbors during and after World War II. Since then they had stayed in touch with each other over the years.

As Jim had been the recipient of the Andrew Anderson collection of butterflies and moths, Alice suggested that perhaps the residents of the Pateros-Brewster area of Washington would be interested in the whereabouts and final disposition of Anderson’s collection of lepidoptera. To that end, here is the butterfly story and how Jim Nebel became owner and caretaker of Washington state’s (at the time) second largest butterfly collection.

In 1944, Jim, his mom Frances and his sister Sandy moved from Belt, Mont., to live with his maternal grandparents, Bill and Lulu Mearns, while Jim’s dad, Herman, served overseas with the Army during World War II.

In 1945, according to a diary kept by Jim’s mother, Jim met his best friend, Kurt Anderson, along with his brother, Mike, March 18, 1945, when he was 4-years-old. It was not long after that Jim met and befriended Kurt’s grandparents, Alma and Andrew Anderson, who happened to have a huge passion for butterfly collecting. Like his mother, Jim kept a diary and the following are stories Jim faithfully documented.

After the war, Jim’s family moved back to Belt, Mont., but each summer was able to return to Pateros. He daydreamed about swimming in the Methow River, climbing the cherry trees with Kurt, throwing apples and "talking" butterflies with Grandpa Anderson. Jim looked forward each summer to heading back for a visit with Kurt and the Butterfly Man. Upon each visit, Jim’s interest in the scaley-winged insects only intensified.

Kurt and his other Pateros friends waited to take off for the river while Jim and Grandpa Anderson finished their visit about collecting butterflies. Over the years, Jim spent hours in the Anderson attic workshop of the house learning about insect identification, "fly ways" and host food plants and many species found in the Pacific Northwest.

The attic served as a work, reading and resting place for Grandpa Anderson. The large windows of the Dutch dormers allowed for good light. The openness of the floor space provided great quantities of storage and room for a workbench, rows of National Geographic Magazines, reference texts, books on building, gardening, science and other special interests. Adjacent the workbench, several homemade butterfly wooden cases with glass tops were stacked and covered with heavy blankets for protection from dust and direct sunlight.

Diary Quote: "Andrew Anderson was an organized person and was adamant about precise information as to nomenclature, dates and place each insect was collected. Wooden mounting boards, straight pins, mounting pins, precut cellophane and case parts were always handy. All the cases were handmade and the glass lids fit each case body individually. The combination of naphthalene (mothballs) and Prince Albert tobacco faintly, but noticeably stimulated your sense of smell.

The naphthalene was used to protect the mounted and cased insects from being eaten by beetle larvae and the quiet emissions from the Anderson's Santa Claus-type curved pipe.

Hardly a summer night went by that Kurt and I did not sleep outside and Grandpa’s upstairs reading light pierced through a large cherry tree and spilled across the backyard and grapevines, creating a crazy-quilt pattern until late hours of the night. On most occasions, Kurt and I were fast asleep well before Grandpa finished reading his books on butterflies. On that note, I remembered Grandpa Anderson once told me, ‘Though I was unable to physically travel, I traveled the world by reading.’"

Things changed for the worst in 1961 for the Anderson family and the butterfly’s habitat supported by the free-flowing Methow River. That was the year construction began by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers of the Wells Dam at Azwell, upriver from Pateros. The Andersons were warned that once the dam was completed, they would have to abandon their home of 37 years.

Before moving, Anderson, then 86, gave his entire collection to his apprentice, Nebel, in 1965. Jim, then 24, loaded up more than 5,000 specimens in 61 cases and accessories and moved the Anderson Collection 500 miles east to Jim’s hometown of Belt. In 1966, the Great Falls Tribune featured a front page article about Nebel’s new collection and added this information:

"Many of the moths and butterflies of the Anderson Collection were caught near Pateros and central Washington. Many came from trading by mail with other collectors all over the world. Nebel continued collecting butterflies and moths and added 500 specimens from a wide area of central Montana."

In 1969, four years after Grandpa Anderson gave his collection to Jim Nebel, Andrew Anderson died at the age of 91. That did not stop Jim’s interest in butterflies and caring for the Anderson Collection.

As time went on, well after Jim married his first wife, Karen Veleber, and started a family, he graduated from Montana State University in 1965. In 1969, he and his family moved to eastern Washington to accept a job as an environmental health specialist with the Whitman County Health Department, leaving his butterfly collection in his basement bedroom in Belt.

Then, suddenly, things changed. A large spring flood in 1984 in Belt was the third flood to hit his parents' home. It led to the final removal of the collection from Jim’s basement bedroom to a safer location.

Contact was made with Richard Zack, curator of Washington State University’s Department of Entomology. In September of 1984, the university accepted three-fourths of the Anderson Collection to add to WSU’s collection, which was named the James collection and dated back to 1892. It was named after WSU’s noted dipterist and medical entomologist, M.T. James, who became curator of the collection in 1947.

In 1985, WSU curator Richard Zack drove 500 miles to Belt in a WSU van, loaded approximately 45 cases of the Anderson Collection and headed back to Pullman. The rest of the collection, which was approximately 1,000 specimens, were loaded up by Jim and brought to his and his second wife Diane’s home in Rosalia.

On April 15, 1985, they received a letter acknowledging the receipt of the Anderson Collection, stating the following:

"I cannot tell you how happy we are to receive this collection. During the last year we have rapidly expanded our holdings of butterflies and moths and your material will add to this fine collection. As I stated to you previously, each specimen will be labeled as the Anderson Collection. You can be assured that the material will have the utmost in care and will be maintained. It is only through donations like the one you are making that we can hope to expand and offer the best possible facilities to our students and the people of Washington state. I know Mr. Anderson would be very proud to have his material on which he spent many hours, in the James Collection."

In 2012, some interesting information about the collection came from Professor Zack. He reported that there were more than 25,000 butterflies and 35,000 moths in the James Collection. At that time, in checking other sources of butterfly collections in the U.S., there was an article entitled "Chasing Monarchs” by Robert Michael Pyle, a lepidopterist at Yale University, that made mention of Andrew Anderson’s Collection.

"At Pateros, where the wild Methow River gushes into the Columbia River, where you can cast an eye over the milkweed (butterfly’s favorite food) around the mouth of the Methow. This stretch of the Columbia was once a major center for Northwest butterfly studies. Andy Anderson in Pateros and John Hopfinger in Brewster maintained important collections and traded specimens with lepidopterists from all over the world."

At the time, the Anderson Collection was the second largest privately-owned butterfly and moth collection, at nearly 5,000, in the state of Washington, with John Hopfinger’s the largest at 10,000.

After storing and caring for the remaining Anderson Collection of close to 1,000 specimens in Rosalia for 26 years, the Nebels decided in 2012 to show off the 80-year-old collection at their Budding Rose Art Gallery in Rosalia. Ever since that day, the Nebels have taken care of the collection to prevent larvae damage to the specimens by faithfully either freezing each case of specimens or keeping mothballs in each case for their protection.

Sadly, in 2016, things changed drastically for the Nebels. After 13 years in remission, non-hodgkins lymphoma came back on Jim Nebel in January.

On June 30, 2016, after fighting the cancer for six months, Nebel lost the battle and died peacefully at hospice in Spokane. As his wife and partner, Diane continued to care of the Anderson Collection. As Jim wished, Diane made arrangements to give the remaining collection and associated equipment to join the rest of the Anderson Collection to Washington State University’s Entomology Department.

For the record, four cases of the Anderson Collection were given to four surviving members of the Anderson family. And to mark a day in history, one butterfly specimen all by itself in a case (L. Argus is "one of the Blues") collected in Neidenburg, Germany, turned 100-years-old July 11, 2016, just 11 days after Jim Nebel passed away.

Professor Richard Zack from WSU’s Entomology Department Oct. 20 met Diane Nebel at the Budding Rose Art Gallery in Rosalia to pick up the rest of the butterfly and moth collection, numbering about 900 specimens.

The collection was picked up to join the rest of Anderson-Nebel’s collection at Washington State University.

This now brings the total count of specimens to approximately 5,000.

Even though it brought tears to Diane’s eyes to watch the last of her husband’s beautiful winged collection head down the road toward Pullman, she is okay with the fact that the collection will provide an ongoing educational experience to students and those who take time to visit the Anderson-Nebel collection – now part of the WSU famous "James Collection." When Zack was asked how many insect specimens besides lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) are there in the WSU James Collection, he indicated about 3.5 million.