The oddest — and, in my opinion, the most historic — object up for grabs at the estate sale at the Herndon home of the late Irvin Williams, the longest-serving head gardener in White House history, is a bag of 13 tennis balls. Historic and, as it turns out, timely.

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       Williams retired in 2008. In his 46 years overseeing the White House grounds, he had accumulated a lot of stuff connected to his job, from wooden Easter eggs imprinted with Bill Clinton’s signature to thank-you notes from Pat Nixon.

       Williams died in 2018 at age 92. His widow, Dorothy, has moved out of the Herndon house they shared. An estate sale gets underway there on Friday. Earlier this week, I went over to check out the inventory.

       The Williamses collected a lot of stuff: Depression glass, clocks, ceramic cookie jars, Little Red Riding Hood salt-and-pepper shakers, auto vases (little glass bud vases that adorned the interiors of fancy cars a century ago). What makes it an only-in-Washington estate sale is the White Housiana. That includes White House Christmas tree decorations, photos, invitations, signed presidential letters and “President Nixon: Now more than ever” campaign buttons.

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       Then there are those tennis balls, in a plastic bag labeled “protest balls,” priced at $120 for the lot. I think they belong in the Smithsonian.

       On April 5, 1992, an estimated 500,000 people marched in Washington in support of abortion rights. At some point during the rally, some of the protesters headed to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW to deliver a message. They wrote their sentiments on tennis balls and threw them over the White House fence.

       That’s when the balls entered Irvin Williams’s domain.

       “I guess during the first George Bush presidency, there was a protest and these people were throwing little messages onto the White House lawn,” said Irvin’s son Richard Williams, 68. “For some reason he picked everything up and he brought some home. I didn’t learn about them till after my dad had passed. I was in the garage looking in a cabinet and I said, ‘What’s in this box?’”

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       Some of the writing on the balls is a bit rude — one of the tamer ones I can quote reads, “Bush’s tush is made of mush” — but most of the messages are fairly straightforward, including “I believe Anita Hill” and “Pro-Choice.”

       Richard said his father also brought a few living things home from the White House. There’s a big magnolia tree by the driveway that may have grown from a cutting taken from the Jackson magnolia, a magnificent specimen that had to be cut down in 2017. And the previous Vienna house the family lived in — Irvin, Dorothy and their five kids — had another resident: a dog named Pushinka.

       Pushinka was a gift from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to John F. Kennedy in 1961. The mutt was the puppy of Strelka, one of the dogs the Soviets had shot into orbit. After JFK’s assassination, his widow, Jacqueline, apparently didn’t want the dog anymore. She asked Williams if he would take her.

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       “Pushinka was our family pet for a lot of years,” Richard said.

       She was a bit snarly at first, he added.

       “My first time trying to pet her, she snapped at me,” he said. “She was very good with adults; then eventually she came around to the kids.”

       Details of the Williams estate sale can be found at caringtransitionsnova.com.

       Marilyn, ready for her close-up

       Speaking of estate sales, there’s an interesting exhibit at the Artspace gallery in Richmond: artwork from the collection of Frances Wessells. Wessells is a dancer and choreographer who helped found the dance department at Virginia Commonwealth University. She’s 102 years old and is moving from her home in Crozier, Va. The artwork that once filled it is on display — and for sale.

       That includes her own sculptures and work by other artists, most notably her late husband, John Bailey. Bailey created the mural of Marilyn Monroe that since 1981 has looked down upon the intersection of Connecticut Avenue and Calvert Street NW in Woodley Park. Among the items at Artspace are an original 2001 John Bailey gouache painting of the Marilyn mural ($550), along with signed screen prints ($200) and artist’s proofs ($150).

       Artspace (at 2833-A Hathaway Rd., Richmond) is open from noon to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays. The Wessells collection is up through June 18. For information, visit artspacegallery.org.