Every four years the U.S. president’s inauguration is followed by a traditional parade down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol building to the White House. One thing easily overlooked in the celebration is that, since 1933, every car in the procession has been fitted with new commemorative license plates, authorized for use for no more than 60 days following the event.
In August, Hollister resident Louk Markham completed his collection of these special license plates and has been displaying them at various events to encourage people to engage in the election process.
“It is time to get out and vote,” he said. “It is not about an individual or a party, it is about how we run this country. It’s about the red, white and blue.”
Markham began collecting license plates in 1966 when he was on a six-week vacation with his family around the United States. He has since gathered several thousand plates into his collection, which includes examples from every state and in every form—from automotive and motorcycle plates to ones issued for Amish horse-drawn carriages. They come in various materials, from standard steel to ones made from copper, porcelain, leather and cardboard.
But Markham’s focus has been on collecting the inaugural plates, either through other collectors or by registering his car in Washington, D.C., starting in 1971 to get the plates directly. One of his collection’s rarest and the plate that completed Markham’s collection, was from the first series ever issued, for the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933.
“There were 500 pairs of license plates issued this first time,” he said. “My plate is number 108 and only about 63 are known to survive. The president had plate number one, the vice president had plate number two and so on down the line for the dignitaries.”
The plates are issued by the District of Columbia and can be legally used for around eight weeks after the inauguration. While they were limited in the early years, the demand from collectors was heavy enough to increase production to 10,000 sets or more.
The plates have been redesigned for each inauguration except for Roosevelt in 1945, when wartime shortages made the materials unavailable. Starting in 2005, two different versions of the plates were released, targeted at the collector’s market.
Marham’s favorite plate is one produced for Barack Obama’s 2013 inauguration. The usual numbers 1 and 2 were reserved for the presidential vehicles but bowing to the urging of District of Columbia Mayor Vince Gray, Obama chose standard-issue D.C. plates for his motorcade, each using “002” for all the vehicles. The motto on the plate is “Taxation without representation,” referring to the fact that district residents pay federal taxes but do not have a voting member in the House or Senate.
“There was a lot of pressure on the White House by the mayor of Washington, D.C., who was seeking statehood to use the D.C. license plates,” he said. “So at the last minute, they had to come up with a bunch of license plates for all the vehicles in the parade that day. I have one of those for a Secret Service vehicle. Even though there were multiple pairs of license plates for presidential vehicles, all the vehicles used the same number for security purposes.”
Markham shows his plates, which cost between $30 and $300, at collector conventions and other civic gatherings along with a 1930s-era 48-star U.S. flag that flew over his father’s house in Denver, Colorado, where he grew up. For Markham, voting is not a matter of partisanship but an exercise in keeping democracy alive.
“Back in the 60s, there was a saying, ‘America, love it or leave it,’” he said. “Well, I stayed and I’m still here. You know, it may not be the most perfect country in the world but I think it is the best country in the world and by voting, we can make it even better. If people don’t vote, things will not go well for us.”
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