The Society’s Board was saddened to hear of the passing of Patricia Ahearn, former Board member. A letter from her husband, follows.
I’m very sorry to say that Pat, my wife of 55 years, died yesterday of complications from cancer and Alzheimer’s. As many of you know, her breast cancer from 2009 came back in her head between the brain and the skull in 2011, and she was also diagnosed with Alzheimer’s that year. Pat was born in Virginia Beach June 26, 1937. Attended Northwestern High School in Hyattsville, MD, where she shared the editing of the school newspaper, yearbooks and was a class officer and member of the Quill and Scroll Honor Society. She attended Maryland University but left after a year to work for the President of a major insurance company in DC.
We were married in 1959 and had Beth, Sue and Allen, Jr.in four years, as good Catholics did then. Dyanne was born in 1968. She raised the children during the 60’s and 70’s, but also was active in our church and the League of Women Voters. Coached girls CYO basketball (finals one year) and also coached for Olney Boys and Girls Club for many years. In 1976, we co-founded the Quill & Brush, a book-and-art store, which she ran first in Olney and then in Bethesda until 1987, when the business moved to our home.
A talented artist, she studied art at Maryland School of Art and the Corcoran, and illustrated the covers for many early Quill & Brush catalogs. Co-author with Allen of seven books on book collecting and rare book values; edited and published several small-press literary editions and hundreds of Quill & Brush collectible-book catalogs.
She is survived by our 4 children, 13 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren. Services will be at St. Mary’s Church on Barnesville Road in Barnesville, MD at 11 am Saturday May 31st. In lieu of flowers we ask that a donation be made to your local non-profit Hospice or the Alzheimer’s Association.
All my best wishes. Allen
Quill & Brush
Pat and Allen Ahearn ran Quill & Brush together for close to forty years. Nicholas Basbanes, remembering her in Fine Books & Collections on May 30, 2014, called the business, by then in Dickerson, Maryland, one of the country’s leading dealers in modern first editions and literary collectibles, and her one of the trade’s most beloved figures. Basbanes names the 1991 Collected Books: The Guide to Values as their first book together, and counts four editions of it. The Society’s 2009 conference program gives their two standard works as Book Collecting: A Comprehensive Guide (Putnam’s, 1989; revised 1995 and 2000) and Collected Books (1991; revised 1997 and 2002), used by most booksellers and appraisers (presenters’ biographies, 2009 conference). The two sources thus differ on which book came first, and the program also puts the shop’s 1976 opening in Bethesda; Allen’s letter above has it in Olney first, and in Bethesda after.
That summer Rare Book Monthly marked her death (“Patricia Ahearn: 1937–2014”), though a caption there gives her birth year as 1934; her husband’s letter gives June 26, 1937.
Pat and Allen Ahearn and the Society
Allen Ahearn was a member from the Society’s early years: he spoke at the 2004 business meeting, gave a talk on “Collecting Mailer” at the 2005 conference, wrote on “Collecting Mailer” for The Mailer Review in 2009 (Works and Days, bibliography 2009), and helped plan the 2009 conference in Washington. The members elected him to the Executive Board in 2008 (minutes; president’s letter); he resigned in 2012 (minutes). The Society’s 2006 conference biographies introduce him as the owner, “with his wife Pat,” of Quill & Brush.
The Board’s notice above calls Pat a former Board member. The Board rosters and minutes in the Society’s records name Allen and do not record a term for Pat. At the 2014 business meeting, in Wilkes-Barre that October, President Mike Lennon opened by acknowledging the group’s sadness at the passing of Robert Lucid, Deborah Martinson, and Patricia Ahearn. Two years later, at the 2016 meeting, Lennon welcomed Allen back as a long-standing member.