An entry from my Marvel blog of long ago, this one eulogizing the comic book reading friend of a letter writer.
My friend Stuart Walford
May 24, 2010 | 12:09 PM | By Tom_Brevoort | In General
Feels like this sort of a Monday, so I thought I’d share the following with everyone:
To all at Marvel,
On April 21st at around 10.50am, my best friend Stuart John Walford passed away in Myton Hospice Warwick, England. He was just 39 years old.
Stuart had been suffering the last few years of his life with a cancerous brain tumor. He leaves behind his wife Nicola and his 2 young children Emily-Grace and Joe.
Stuart and I got to know each other when we found ourselves walking the same roads and streets to get to school – we were both 12 years old. Before long we were going round each others houses after school, playing on Stu’s Atari, talking about girls, having a laugh at our teachers expense (one in particular – our maths teacher Mr. Clark – we would do tape recordings of our less than complimentary impressions of him then play them back to ourselves. We’d laugh until we cried). We also discovered that we both loved comics, Marvel in particular. We’d both started reading them from about the age of 5 and started seriously collecting them from about 9 years old. We had diverse tastes and also shared ones. I can still see us both giggling with excitement at the ripe old age of 29 when we sat in the cinema watching the 1st X-Men film! We never thought there’d be a truly great Marvel comic book film ever made! Through the years we had different partners, lived in different houses and had different jobs from when we’d first become friends, but comics were always there – always our main talking point, our main interest. I was looking forward to us both becoming grumpy old men, moaning about the world around us, but also chatting about the latest comic issues, the next Marvel film. Sadly that won’t happen. I now have the task of sorting through Stu’s vast collection of comics – keeping some back for Emily-Grace and Joe to hopefully take interest in over the coming years, the rest I need to find a buyer for on behalf of his widow Nicola. If any bulk comic-collection buyers can help with that it would be much appreciated.
My main reasons for writing this email are so that everyone will think about Stuart just as I and his family do. I really miss him. I also wrote this to say a big ‘thank you’ on behalf of myself and Stu to all at Marvel over the years for being such a big part of our lives, our friendship. If you ever feel that the job you do isn’t important or doesn’t have any significance, please read through these words again and understand how much the work you do and the comics you create mean to your readers. Thank you.
Best regards,
Jason Deeming
Nuneaton, Warwickshire
England
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
Sometimes, a response is not required. Friends and family and good memories are the stuff of Heaven.
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