Rose Herman, 1914-2010

My grandmother, Rose Herman, died yesterday a few weeks shy of her 96th birthday. Coming out of a poor family in Browndale, PA, and then being a young adult in the Depression, Gram didn't have much time for the foolishness of buying comic books for her grandchildren. However, she let me store 15,000 or so in her attic while I was out of space at home, or living at college or in rented apartments. She was quite amused when I'd show up every 3 months or so with another longbox to 'insulate her attic' (not a recommended way to store your comics, of course, but needs must). We used to visit her every Saturday when I was young too, and I used to sit on her back porch and page through the Overstreet Price Guide (pre-Internet), amazed at the number of comics I still had to even see, let alone collect.

Over the past few years, she'd been fading away, getting confused and aggressive, so she was in a nursing home in Texas near her son when she passed away, having outlived almost everyone she knew.