Almost thirty years ago Ron Daresh came into our office which was then located on Kennedy Blvd in downtown Philadelphia. His Dad had been a collector and he had the stamps loaded into the family home in which he lived in Charleston,West Virginia. I made arrangements to go see him and flew down there a few weeks later. Daresh had one of the weirdest lives I have ever seen. He worked for the state in some mid level sinecure as his deceased father had been a party functionary in the Democratic party which had controlled West Virginia for 75 years. He lived with his mother, who was senile and with his wife. His marital reltionship was right out of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe”. His wife Angie,was a pleasant enough woman, to me. And Ron was pleasant enough, to me. But when they spoke to each other it was as if they had a lifelong pact to do whatever they could to make the other as miserable as possible. Ron was one of these sellers who won’t let you quietly go through the stamps that are for sale and evaluate them and come up with a price. He needed to hold up every page and say “How much for this” and when I said a number he would nod and carefully place the page in a pile and write down that number. What should have taken several hours took two days and I left, leaving him a check and carrying back many cartons to my office. Angie and Ron had snarled at each other throughout my two days there. My guess is that they are both gone now. But I always remember them as two people each quite pleasant by themselves but who together were very toxic.
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