I Miss My Friend, Herb Peck

You won't know Herb Peck unless you are a Nashvillian, or one who deals in guns or photography. Herb worked in the Fine Arts Department at Vanderbilt University until his retirement. He enjoyed a too short retirement, dying suddenly over a year ago. I first met Herb at the Nashville Flea Market. We kept bumping into each other looking for the same things. We had a very friendly rivalry and traded and sold to each other for years, talking on the phone at least once a week. Herb was an authentic character. He had an unflattering name for everyone, or in my case a sound as well. Whenever he would see me approaching he would start howling like a hound dog. He likened me to a hound dog who slept under the porch until I caught the scent of some prized item. Some people didn't like Herb as he loved stirring up trouble between people and then stepping back and enjoying the ensuing human drama. The one thing everyone agreed on was that Herb knew everything about photography. He had two world class photographic collections, one which was stolen by a local scoundrel over twenty years ago and another which has been dispersed throughout the Civil War collecting community, among those who wanted something to remember "ole Herb" by. He will forever be remembered by his friends and through all of the books which have reproduced Herb's images. Herb used to warn me that it was not my job to educate others but everything I learned about photography I learned from Herb Peck, whom I still miss.