She collected thousands of puzzles in her lifetime. Her friend wants to get her a world record.

For decades, a Eugene woman quietly built what might be the world’s largest collection of jigsaw puzzles.

Gail Wickstrom died last September. She was 80 years old. She lived alone in a light-blue home in south Eugene packed to the gills with paperbacks, CDs, DVDs, horse-themed decór and, most of all, jigsaw puzzles.

First, they filled shelves in her garage. As the collection expanded, she purchased two storage units to house the piles of puzzles. Now, they stand side-by-side in her backyard, still sheltering her treasures.

The puzzles have been under the care of Bob Kendall, Wickstrom’s friend and classmate from the South Eugene High School class of 1962, who is now trying to get his friend recognized as a Guinness World Record holder two times over. 

Kendall knows Wickstrom’s collection handily beats out the records for total puzzles collected and completed, by a margin of thousands. She faithfully cataloged her puzzles in a digital spreadsheet, logging each as she purchased and completed them.

As of last year, the current record holder for largest collection of jigsaw puzzles is Liza Fireman of Bellevue, Washington, with 4,060. Wickstrom had more than 7,000 puzzles. For completed sets, the record is held by Khloud Abozayda of St. Paul, Minnesota: 2,453. Wickstrom: 6,000.

Kendall mentioned the possibility of the world record to her a few times over the years, but Wickstrom was private, and she demurred.

“It’s her small claim to fame,” he said. “It’s something nice for a friend that I didn’t do while she was around. I’m sorry that I didn’t, now.”

A particular, private woman

Shirley Henderson can’t remember a time when Wickstrom, her best friend, didn’t have jigsaw puzzles, pictures printed on cardboard or wood and cut into shapes to be carefully assembled.

The two met at their first jobs out of high school at the University of Oregon library when they were both 18 years old. Wickstrom was quiet. Henderson was quiet, too, and they sparked up a friendship over daily lunches and chats as they worked cataloging books. 

Wickstrom was a voracious reader who always had a paperback in her hand. Henderson said a frequent sight was walking into a restaurant where she was meeting Wickstrom for lunch to find her waiting with a book cracked open.

Wickstrom was a bridesmaid at Henderson’s wedding, and they worked together until Henderson left the library in her mid-20s to raise her children. Wickstrom got a master’s degree and stayed on at the library.

They reconnected in earnest later in life, when Henderson’s children were teenagers. Henderson became an accountant, and Wickstrom started going to her to have her tax returns prepared.

From there, they started spending more time together; in recent years, they regularly attended shows at the Very Little Theatre and the Shedd Institute. Henderson also got into jigsaw puzzles, and knew who to ask to borrow some. 

There was no consistent theme in the puzzles Wickstrom picked out for her, but Henderson noticed she never lent out a horse-themed one. “I might have lost a piece, and that just ruins the puzzle,” she said. 

Henderson still has the last puzzle her friend lent her, a mountain scene she has yet to assemble.

Puzzle loaning was a cornerstone of Kendall and Wickstorm’s friendship, too. They weren’t close in high school, but built a friendship in the last 10 years thanks to a monthly alumni meetup lunch at Roaring Rapids Pizza Co. and a mutual, discovered fascination with puzzles. He asked to borrow some, and she started loaning him bags full each month at lunch. 

Wickstrom would watch television as she worked on her puzzles, preferably “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” on Sunday mornings, Kendall said. “We had to do Sunday morning breakfast around that.”

Last fall, Kendall noticed Wickstrom wasn’t at the lunch. He drove by her house one day to find a woman, who said she was there to help handle Wickstrom’s estate and informed him she had died.

His next question: What would happen to the puzzles? 

A world record-sized collection 

Wickstrom was meticulous with her puzzles, applying a librarian’s attention to cataloging detail.

Her storage unit shelves are alphabetized, labeled in sparkly letters. When she completed a puzzle, she would carefully stack portions of the completed picture into a Ziploc bag and write notes on the interior of the box. 

With so much jigsaw experience, she could be an exacting judge. One, she noted, was “vexing”: “Bad puzzle; Too many pieces have doubles, including edge pieces.”

Henderson, the executor of Wickstrom’s estate, knew her friend had a lot of puzzles but didn’t realize the sheer size of the collection, or the fact it could be a world record-setting number.

She knew Wickstrom was a collector and knew she had the storage units, but didn’t pry into her friend’s habit. They always spent time together in Wickstrom’s living room or went to shows, so it was only after Wickstrom died that Henderson saw just how massive her collection of puzzles was. 

“I was in awe,” she said. “At times since her passing, I’m thinking, ‘I didn’t know her very well.’”

Wickstrom never married, and had no children. Her direct heirs are her late brother’s children who live in California, and a select number of local relatives. Kendall volunteered to handle the puzzles when he heard Wickstrom had died, and Wickstrom’s family, intimidated by the number of jigsaw puzzles to sort through, welcomed the help. 

He’s still working on the Guinness recognition, which requires paying for registration, submitting an application, waiting up to 20 weeks for a response, submitting evidence, and then waiting up to an additional 20 weeks. He’s submitted three applications and has yet to hear back.

In the meantime, he’s categorizing the puzzles, and sold almost 1,500 of them in a recent yard sale outside Wickstrom’s home. Carol Morrison, one of Wickstrom’s friends and neighbors, has now joined his puzzle cataloging effort.

Her collection is impressive, and Guinness does allow posthumous recognition. But there’s one major obstacle in Kendall’s mission to memorialize his friend’s record-setting number.

Wickstrom logged her puzzles, but she didn’t document the final, most crucial piece: her computer password.

A second puzzle sale is scheduled for noon to 4 p.m., March 21, at Wickstrom’s house at 2810 Harris St.