My Life With Comic Books: Part # 183

A brief introduction:

My name is Paul Howley. Some people have called me the "luckiest man in the comic book business" but that all changed as of January 9th 2001, when our son, Adam Howley, died.

The current cast of characters:
Paul Howley: age 46
Mal Howley: age 46
Adam Howley: my son, age 21
Cassy Howley: my daughter, age 17

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP-Part 183

The winter of 2001 was now gone and the ground was no longer frozen. It was time to bury our son, Adam. We had picked out a burial lot on a small hill in Union Cemetery. It was an awful feeling, knowing that this would mark the last place that Adam’s earthly body would occupy.

The day of the burial started at our home, with our friend, Meridith, practicing a song written by Dar Williams that she would sing at the cemetery with Cassandra. It was a meaningful song that pointed out that we are all “family” in many ways. Here are the lyrics:

Can you fix this? It's a broken heart.
It was fine, but it just fell apart.
It was mine, but now I give it to you,
Cause you can fix it, you know what to do.

Let your love cover me,
Like a pair of angel wings,
You are my family,
You are my family.

We stood outside in the summer rain,
Different people with a common pain.
A simple box in that hard red clay,
Where we left him to always remain.

Let your love cover me,
Like a pair of angel wings,
You are my family,
You are my family.

The child who played with the moon and stars,
Waves a snatch of hay in a common barn,
In the lonely house of Adam's fall
Lies a child, it's just a child that's all, crying

Let your love cover me,
Like a pair of angel wings,
You are my family,
You are my family.


My brother-in-law Greg picked us up at our house and drove Mal, Cassandra and I to the funeral home so that we could see the casket. Five months before, at the memorial service, we handed out permanent markers and had encouraged friends and family members to write their “good-byes” to Adam on the casket. This was our private time to get to read what was written by the people who knew and loved Adam. After we were done, Greg drove us to the cemetery and I noticed that Laconia Monument Company had delivered the headstone to the gravesite.

When we arrived I was glad to see that the funeral home had put up a large tent over the open grave because it was pouring rain. The funeral director gave out black umbrellas to the hundred or so friends and relatives who came to the service. It reminded me of the burial scenes that were frequently in movies…dark, somber skies with a heavy downpour of rain and a “sea” of black umbrellas. I remember thinking that Adam would have appreciated the image.

After I got out of the car, Cassandra broke down in tears, sobbing for the first time in our presence since her brother’s death.

My memory isn’t very clear about the burial service anymore, but I do remember Cassy and Meridith singing at the front of the group of people. I also remember giving out over a hundred orange roses to the attendees. Then, our friend, Eric Robinson, conveyed an important message to everyone after someone handed out small white cards with the word “Why” on it. He explained that we shouldn’t ask why Adam died. The more important question is “what will we do now that Adam has died?” Will we be angry? Or depressed? Or will we learn to love people more while they are here with us? Eric asked everyone to drop the white cards into the open grave as a symbol of our decision to not ask why.

After the service we invited everyone to the home of my sister Sharon and my brother-in-law Greg. There were well over a hundred people there and while they ate food and shared more memories of Adam, I passed out copies of a videotape I had made that included clips from Adam’s short life. I included bits that had significant meaning to Mal and I…segments from birthday celebrations, holiday gatherings and from his many performances in plays. It had taken me several weeks to put these together and some of the relatives and friends appreciated the opportunity to learn more about Adam through the tapes.

By the time everyone had gone home, the realization had set-in that this was, most likely, the last gathering that would be about our son Adam.

My Life With Comic Books: Part # 106

The current cast of characters:
Paul Howley: age 41
Mal Howley: my wife
My brother Rick and his wife Lori

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP-Part 106

My youngest brother, Rick, was only six years old when I got married so we weren’t very close when he was really young but there had been a period of time when we got to know each other pretty well. In the late 1970’s and very early 1980’s Rick worked with me at the many baseball card conventions where I set up booths of cards to sell. Even though he was only a teenager, he had a good head for math and knew more about sports and the players than I did. It required long hours and hard work at these card shows, but we had a fun time together. But after Mal and I had our son, Adam, we weren’t attending as many card shows anymore and as Rick got older he got more involved in school, sports, and girls.

Rick eventually married his high school “sweetheart,” Lori, and they had a son, Jordan. Rick was a hard-working man who frequently worked over sixty hours each week at a physically demanding job in order to provide a good lifestyle for his family. They bought a nice home in a quiet rural town because they wanted to have a pleasant and safe place to raise Jordan. Even though it required Rick to drive a long way to work each day, Rick was willing to sacrifice a lot for his family.

In April of 1996, Lori was pregnant again, this time with twins. As they were preparing for life with twins, they were stunned when Lori began to have complications during her 19th week of pregnancy. She was hospitalized in Boston from that time on. During the 28th week of her pregnancy, it was determined that an emergency surgery was needed and Lori gave birth to Ryan and Tyler Howley on October 23rd. The two tiny babies each weighed only two pounds, two ounces and had serious health concerns. While Lori was on another floor, recovering from the surgery, the doctors told Rick that Ryan wasn’t going to make it. Rick held Ryan in his arms as he died. Rick then had to bring Ryan to Lori so she could say her “goodbyes.”

I couldn’t possibly understand what Rick and Lori went through during those weeks. Lori had been hospitalized far away from their home for nine weeks. Rick had visited Lori in Boston as often as possible and he also had to deal with going to work and keeping as much of a normal life as possible for Jordan. Some of us helped out by taking care of Jordan when we could, but much of the time, Rick handled it all. Now they had lost Ryan and Tyler was in danger. They also had to arrange a funeral for Ryan.

Although I don’t remember all of the details of the funeral and burial, I’ll never forget the intense look of sadness on my brother’s face at the cemetery. As I watched him live through this tragedy I wished I could help to relieve his emotional pain but I had little to offer him.

A high school English teacher had convinced me that death was just “part of life.” I wasn’t an emotional human being and death rarely surprised me. I still felt very saddened by the death of those people who were close. I understood why people would cry but I was unable to let the emotion out. In his time of need, I wasn’t a “good” brother for Rick.

Rick and Lori’s new son, Tyler, continued to lose weight and soon weighed only one pound, eleven ounces. It was a scary time for them as they waited for Tyler to become healthy and strong enough to be released from the hospital. Thankfully, he survived and is a healthy young boy today.

My Life With Comic Books: Part # 55

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 55

In the mid-1980’s the average customer of my comic book store was a male between the ages of twelve and fifty. My store was in a rough section of the big city of Worcester so not too many women came to the area. My main product line was comic books and not too many women read comic books in those days. But occasionally we had some female collectors. Marvel Comics published a comic book of The X-Men that appealed to men and women alike and we had two teen-age female fans that shopped at my store each week. They almost always came to the store together and they’d laugh and joke with us. They were very outgoing. One of the girls, Christine, had purple hair. Paul Dinsdale, my good friend and customer, noticed her right away. Paul spent a lot of time each week visiting me and hanging around with some of the other “regulars” at the store. He loved getting beaten by me in Chess and the strategy game of Risk so we’d try to play a few days a week. He’d listen to my employees, David Lynch and Pat Donley, as they interacted with Christine. He knew she had a good sense of humor and he liked the idea that a woman was enjoying comic books. Paul wasn’t dating anyone at the time and it was obvious that he was “interested” in Christine. He was just a little bit too shy to ask her out on a date.

One day, after Christine paid for her comic books and walked out of the store, Paul Dinsdale remarked that he’d like to ask her out. I said, “ Watch the store for a minute!” I ran outside and caught up with Christine before she drove away. I told her that Paul was the tall thin guy in the store. I told her that he was kind of shy and explained that he’d like to take her out on a date. I also assured her that he was a “gentleman” and he’s relatively harmless. She agreed to give him a try. I gave “Dins” her phone number and they began dating. Paul and Christine began dating in 1987 and got married in 1993. For some reason, they invited me to be part of their wedding.

At home, my wife and kids were busy with school for Adam and dance lessons for Cassandra. During the summer months Mal would take them to a local town pool in Clinton for swimming lessons. They’d be there four or five days each week and both of our kids loved to swim. I’d join them after work. Although Mal enjoyed taking the kids to the pool, we both agreed that it would be much nicer if she didn’t have to pack up all of the stuff and drive all of the way to Clinton to cool off. We started planning to have a pool installed at our home in Bolton. We hired our friend, Paul Weatherbee, to clear about half an acre of dense trees to make room for our new pool. We also hired our friend, Allan Traylor’s brother Danny, to prepare the area by leveling the ground and removing the tree stumps. We hoped that we could afford to have the actual swimming pool installed the next year.

Our friend, Debbie Traylor had been fighting cancer for quite a while now but she had reacted well to a new chemotherapy and seemed to be winning the battle. In 1988 we all decided to go on a cruise together. We were such good friends that we thought we would be comfortable enough to stay in the same cabin together. We had vacationed together for years and we always had a great time. This trip was no exception. This was the first cruise for Allan and Debbie and they had a good time but Debbie seemed exhausted. She would sleep late and frequently take a nap. We didn’t mind because we were just happy that she was going to beat the cancer and we were glad to all be together.

When the trip was over Debbie went to her doctor and found out that the cancer had spread again. Eight weeks later, Debbie died. Mal lost her best friend. Allan lost his wife. Five-year-old Peter lost his Mom.

Picture: Our final vacation with our friend, Debbie Traylor

My Life With Comic Books; Part # 44

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 44

My wife, Mal, and I are both from very large families and we had been fortunate that most of us were quite healthy. Mal had tumors in her left eye that eventually left her blind in that eye but other than that every one seemed healthy. Mal’s father, Richard, had a major heart attack when he was only forty-eight years old but he had recovered and he seemed to be doing okay. Most of our close friends were young and healthy too. That all changed in the mid-1980’s.

Our close friends, Allan and Debbie Traylor, were told that Debbie had cancer. We were all shocked because Debbie seemed to be in such great physical condition. She took good care of herself. She exercised and ate the “right” foods. The way Allan and I ate you’d have assumed that if someone were going to get sick, it would be one of us. But not Debbie. Debbie went in for surgery to remove the cancer tumor in 1986.

Mal’s mother, Madeline, had to find a new doctor because her regular doctor was retiring. So on a Friday she found a new doctor because she needed to refill her blood pressure medication. This new doctor found that Madeline was retaining fluids and her blood work came back abnormal. He wanted to admit her to the hospital on the following Monday for additional testing. The day before she was to go to the hospital Richard suddenly had another heart attack and was admitted to the intensive care unit of Marlboro Hospital. His condition was serious but he was stable. The next day we brought Madeline in for her tests and it was discovered that she was actually quite ill. She began bleeding from her esophagus. The doctors considered her condition very serious. We were all told that she probably wouldn’t live for more than a week. We were advised to not tell Richard that his wife was in serious condition because the doctors were afraid that it could trigger another heart attack. We all felt bad that Richard wasn’t aware of Madeline’s condition. Eventually the doctors decided to tell him. Richard had more heart attacks. Almost miraculously, Madeline responded to some medication and survived. She was released but she was still very sick.

Richard was finally released from the hospital and he came home to begin the long process of taking care of his wife. He still had to work so it was up to his children to care for Madeline as their schedules allowed. Most of their children were grown up with families of their own and they either lived far away or had the responsibility of full time jobs. Madeline’s two youngest children, Carol and Maddy, were still living at home so they were able to take care of her at night but they both worked full time jobs during the day. Madeline’s oldest son, Dick, lived nearby with his wife Diane. Diane and Mal were “stay at home Moms” so they worked together to take care of Madeline.

Madeline’s condition worsened and in January of 1987 her doctor recommended that she should go into a rehabilitation center to regain her strength. He thought that she’d only be in the nursing home for a couple of weeks. We all looked forward to her coming home. We visited her almost every day during her first two weeks. She was very alert and talkative but she was in a lot of pain. Then we got the phone call. She had slipped into a coma. The doctors didn’t know why. She remained in the coma for almost three weeks until one day, when the whole family was at her bedside, she woke up! Even though she was in pain, she spoke with everyone and told all her children that she loved them. A week later she went back into a coma. She died on February 18, 1987.

For the entire fifteen years I had known my in-laws they had been looking forward to retirement together. They had lived a very simple life. All they wanted was to buy a small home in Maine, buy a new Cadillac, and get a dog. Richard had retired from his union truck-driving job three months before Madeline died. This profoundly affected me. Mal and I decided that we wouldn’t “put-off” enjoying life for some future time that may never come. I began to develop a long-range plan at my comic book store so that I could stop working by the age of forty. I loved working at my store but I knew that I wanted to spend more time with my wife and children if it could be arranged.

Next chapter: Our dear friend Debbie has a relapse.
Picture: Mal's mom and Dad

My Life With Comic Books: Part # 30

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 30

I had given my business card to a man who had some comic books that he wanted to sell and a few weeks later he was killed in a car accident. His mother found my card in his wallet and called me to see if I wanted to buy the comic books. I explained that I had already seen the comics that he stored in the basement of the music store and I really wasn’t interested in buying them. She said, “Oh, not those. I mean his private collection in his apartment.”

She gave me directions and I drove over there as soon as I could. Her son had been a comic book dealer in the 1970’s and I remembered the great selection of comics he always had at the Boston conventions. I hoped that these would be at his apartment. When I entered his apartment his mother introduced me to her son’s girlfriend and a family friend who was there to help clean out the apartment. She led me to the bedroom and I was surprised to see thousands of comic books on shelves that went almost completely around the room. The comics were carefully stacked in piles on the shelves and they were all “double-bagged” for protection. As I sorted through them I realized that there was at least one copy of every Marvel comic book from 1960-1970 including Fantastic Four #1, The Amazing Spider-Man #1, The Hulk #1, The X-Men #1 and Daredevil #1! There were duplicates of many of these valuable key issues too! It took me over an hour to sort through just the Marvel comics. Then I started on the DC comics.

When this collector had sold comics at the old Boston conventions in the 1970’s, there was very little demand for the DC comics of the late 1950’s and 1960’s. Judging by the enormous quantities of these comics he had at his apartment he wasn’t very successful selling these at the shows. In 1983, however, these comic books were in high demand. DC Comics published Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman and those always sold well, but they also published lesser-known titles including Rip Hunter, Sea Devils, Metal Men, The Brave and the Bold, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, The Flash, Green Lantern, The Justice League of America, Mystery In Space, Strange Adventures and dozens more. This collection had as many as twenty copies of almost every issue! This was going to be an expensive collection!

As I was calculating my offer for this important collection, I could overhear the mother and the girlfriend begin to argue about the comic books. The girlfriend claimed that since she might have eventually married the collector, the comic books would have belonged to her. The mother disagreed and continued arguing. Every so often the mother would say, “Have you come across a Batman #1? I know he had a copy of it.” This made the girlfriend even greedier because she knew that would be a valuable comic book. I was also hoping to find this rare comic book! The girlfriend began to cry. The other friend who was helping to clean out the apartment ignored them and continued working.

I was almost finished with my calculations when I began to worry about leaving the girlfriend around the comics. If, out of greed, she grabbed even a small handful of the comics, it could cost me thousands of dollars. I called my cousin, Steven, quietly explained my problem, and asked him to come over to help me. By the time he arrived, the mother had accepted my offer. This was the most expensive collection I had purchased since I split up with my partner from Sparkle City Comics.

We began to load our cars with the thousands of comics, being careful to always have one of us in the apartment with the remaining collection. When we were finally done with the loading, I went back upstairs to get my price guide and calculator. I assured the mother that if I discovered a copy of Batman #1 mixed in with the rest of the comics, I’d call her to give her more money. As my cousin and I were walking out, the guy who was helping to clean out the apartment reached into a closet and pulled out a huge trash bag and said, “Hey, what’s this?!” The bag was filled with golden-age comic books from the 1940’s!

Next chapter: I renegotiate the deal.