Meet Amy Acton's bobblehead and the fan club behind it
In the spring of 2020 a state health director got a fan club, a nickname, a charity T-shirt and a nodding figurine from a Milwaukee museum. Here is where each one came from and where the money went.
A tiny Amy Acton stands at a tiny podium in a white lab coat, the Ohio flag on the front, her head ready to nod at anything you say. It cost $25 in the spring of 2020. I went looking for this object's story because it is the most cheerful thing to come out of a hard season, and because it now sits in an odd new light: the doctor it honors is running for governor of Ohio.
The museum that made it
The figure came from the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum in Milwaukee's Walker's Point neighborhood, founded by Brad Novak and Phil Sklar and home to roughly 10,000 different bobbleheads. It calls itself the only bobblehead-specific museum in the world. That claim is the museum's own.
The museum unveiled the Acton figure on April 28, 2020. It had just released a Mike DeWine bobblehead, and fans asked for his health director next. According to News 5 Cleveland it was the first bobblehead ever made of an Ohio state health official. Orders were $25 each, plus $8 flat-rate shipping, with delivery expected in July 2020.
Bobbleheads are the ultimate honor, and we think Dr. Acton deserves it given what she has done and continues to do for the state of Ohio and the country in the battle against COVID-19.
The best part is the fine print. Five dollars from every sale went to the American Hospital Association's Protect the Heroes fund, which backed the 100 Million Mask Challenge. A novelty figurine bought masks.
Seventy-three thousand fans and a nickname
The bobblehead was late to the party. By March 27, 2020, a Facebook group called the Dr. Amy Acton Fan Club had passed 73,000 members, WOSU reported. Fans put her quotes on coffee mugs, wrote thanks in sidewalk chalk and started calling her Dr. Action. One caption kept turning up under photos of her at the daily 2 p.m. briefings: "Not all heroes wear capes. Mine wears a white coat."
Some later coverage cited a much larger membership. I could only confirm the March figure from a source that published it at the time, so that is the number here.
The shirt that came home
That caption became a product. Homage, a Columbus clothing company, made a retro "Not All Heroes Wear Capes" shirt and sweatshirt, and all proceeds went to Huckleberry House, a central Ohio nonprofit for young people facing violence, neglect, poverty and homelessness.
The choice was not random. Before joining state government, Acton worked at The Columbus Foundation, which directed about $500,000 in grants to Huckleberry House for youth housing. She had also lived through homelessness herself as a child in Youngstown. The shelter's director remembered her visits this way:
it was very clear that she had great empathy for the youth we served.
The de Beaumont Foundation, a public health philanthropy, wrote about the fan club and the shirt on March 23, 2020, as evidence that the pandemic had made public health officials visible in a way they rarely are. That is the useful reading. Most people never learn a health director's name.
What the keepsake means now
Collectors should know two things. First, I could not confirm whether the Acton bobblehead is still for sale, so check with the museum directly before you go hunting. Second, it predates politics: the figure shipped in 2020, and Acton did not announce her campaign for governor until January 7, 2025.
Her supporters and critics will read the object differently this fall, and that is fair. My own view is simpler. Plenty of 2020 souvenirs were about fear. This one was about gratitude, and five dollars of every sale went toward masks for hospital workers. A small nodding doctor did more good than most figurines ever get the chance to.
Sources
Every factual claim above traces to one of these. Links open in a new tab.
- The National Bobblehead Hall of Fame honors Dr. Amy Acton by creating bobblehead
- Dr. Amy Acton receives own bobblehead for being 'instrumental in the continued fight against the coronavirus'
- National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum
- Inside Dr. Amy Acton's Internet Fan Club
- Homage Honors Dr. Amy Acton With T-Shirt
- Not All Heroes Wear Capes: COVID-19 Response Inspires T-shirt, Fan Club
- Amy Acton
