Cindy Jackson surrounded by boxes of comic
books in Special Collections and Archives, VCU Libraries, ca. 2010. She’s holding the
first issue of MAD magazine published in 1952.
Remembering
Cindy Jackson
I want to divert from Richmond history with a remembrance of
Cindy Jackson, my longtime co-worker and friend who died at age 53 in 2023.
Cindy would have turned 57 this Tuesday, June 30th. Cindy managed
the comic book collection in the Special Collections and Archives department at
the James Branch Cabell Library of VCU Libraries for over twenty years. When
Cindy died, there were several online articles about her role as a comic book librarian. These were terrific tributes full of praise for her knowledge about comic books and how helpful she
was to library patrons and those in the comic book community. I will provide
some links to these articles and other salutes to her at the bottom of this
blog entry. I want to share my thoughts about Cindy, who was a generous,
thoughtful person. She had many more interests and hobbies than just comic
books.
The Special Collections and Archives department at the James
Branch Cabell Library, VCU Libraries, has a vast variety of materials
that make up its Comic Arts Collection - one of the largest in the nation. It is one of several subject areas that
the department collects and preserves. Other collections include the book arts, rare
books and periodicals, Richmond history, the history of health care in
Virginia, and VCU's University Archives.
I had been working in Special Collections and Archives for about four years when we hired Cindy as a student worker in 1996. After she graduated from high school in Hopewell, she attended J. Seargent Reynolds Community College and then transferred to VCU majoring in Information Systems. She later received a master’s degree in English. Her first job in our department was organizing and indexing the large collection of comic book related and popular culture periodicals donated to the department by M. Thomas Inge. In the early 1970s, Dr. Inge helped establish the Comic Book collection at the library when he was an English professor at VCU. The Inge collection of periodicals numbered over 500 individual titles. By 1999, she completed the list and it’s available on the Internet Archive HERE. She did a great job.
At this same time, she began working on our reference desk,
helping students with questions and retrieving materials for patrons and
reshelving books and other materials. She became very knowledgeable of the many
different types of collections Special Collections houses. In fact, she knew our
book and manuscript collections better than most of the heads of our
department we had over the years.
Cindy holding a rare copy of All Negro
Comics No.1, published in June 1947. It was one of several rare comic books acquired and donated by a long time donor who had asked Cindy what her top ten list of comic books she wanted for the collection.
Over time Cindy became the de facto coordinator of the comic
book collection. She became the main staff member who added newly acquired comic
books to the collection and updated our comic book database. When she started
in the late 1990s, we had about 10,000 comic books (the number varies according
to different sources, but this is the number I remember). This did not include
the many books or journals we had about comic books, comic strips, etc. – the
full focus of what we eventually called our Comic Arts collection. In 2005 (on
Christmas Day), she became a full-time employee at the library. The comic books
numbered well over 100,000 by the time she died. She bagged and boarded most of
them. She KNEW the collection. We had one wealthy comic book donor who
began donating materials to us around 2010. In the last few years before
Cindy’s death, he would ask her on an almost annual basis what her top ten wish
list was for particular comic books. She would share her list with him and he acquired many of those rare items. He was an avid comic book
collector and knowledgeable about comic book history. He told me once that
Cindy “knew what she was talking about” with
her lists – that she always selected not only rare comic books for him to
purchase but important and significant ones in comic book history.
One of our many rare books in Special Collections and
Archives – the 1930 first edition of The Maltese Falcon.
Cindy had many other interests. She was an avid reader – she was Always reading a book - and enjoyed our large collection of rare books. One example was a 1930 first edition (once owned by Hunter Stagg) of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. She was a fan of Hammett and named the last cat she owned Dashiell. She owned many cats in her lifetime. She was a fan of trashy novels and quality fiction. Some of her favorite professors were ones she met in the English department as she pursed her graduate degree in literature. She told me several times her family owned a first edition of Gone with the Wind.
A Calvin and Hobbes comic strip from 1985. Cindy
had her own collection of books at home. She was especially fond of her many Calvin
and Hobbes books - she loved that comic strip. One of her Calvin and Hobbes books was published in German given to her by her friend, and former co-worker, Kelly Burrows.
She was a big music fan, had many albums and CDs. I remember
her saying that her oldest brother, John, turned her on to rock music of the
1960s and 1970s. In high school, she saw a good number of shows by the Dave
Matthews Band in Richmond. I know she
was a big fan of Nirvana, Foo Fighters, and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers amongst other bands. She even turned
her father on to Tom Petty and Sheryl Crow. Oh yes, she introduced him on to Seinfeld
too. She was very southern in that she referred to her house in Hopewell as
“Daddy’s house.” After the death of her mother, a longtime nurse at a Hopewell hospital,
she lived with her father until he died.
She was a big fan of the Batman, especially the
revamped version that appeared in graphic novels. She was an avid TV watcher
and would always recommend shows to me. Her taste ran from comedies like The
Big Bang to horror shows like The Walking Dead. Her office was
decorated with comic book paraphernalia and other popular culture items –
including a growing collection of Funko Pop figures, including one of the
character Daryl Dixon of the Walking Dead. She even had a large Batman piece of art created by a local artist specifically for Cindy. It showed Batman peeking into her office window.
Cindy was also a sports fan. She, her father and two
brothers enjoyed NASCAR and attended races often at the Richmond Raceway. She liked watching college basketball. Her favorite team was Duke. She loved
movies – I think she saw the first Twilight film a good ten times in the
movie theater. She confided to me that her favorite film at one time was The
Shawshank Redemption. We even
celebrated her birthday one year with a Shawshank Redemption themed birthday
lunch.
Cindy loved to cook and share recipes. She especially liked to make baked goods and often shared her recipes with other library staff. She and I often talked about food and what we wanted to get for lunch at work. I remember one year when I kept bringing up how much I wanted homemade, southern style cornbread, she bought me a new iron skillet for Xmas and gave me her recipe for her version of cornbread, which included a tablespoon or two of Duke’s mayonnaise. The gift included all the ingredients needed for the cornbread including a bottle of Duke’s.
She loved her parents and her two brothers. She spoke of them often. And of her niece and sister-in-law. Her brother Stephen would call almost daily at around 2 pm after Cindy’s late lunch so they could catch up on their day.
In the department, Cindy was the person who ordered our
office and archival supplies. She loved going through those kinds of catalogs.
She was very efficient and always seemed to get us the best Stuff. I often asked her to address envelopes
for me because my handwriting was awful while her penmanship was clear and
precise.
Cindy always had cool looking U.S. Postage stamps and was
always sending out mail to her friends and pen pals on wonderful looking
stationary. She made a great pen pal friend in Australia. As a kid, Cindy was a Garfield comic strip fan, and I know she had and
used Garfield postage stamps.
She was friends with many staff members from departments
throughout the library including many staff in Starbucks and those working on the Information desk with whom she would chat
with as she made her in and out of the building. She was especially fond of
Dave Morrison, the building manager, and Gregory Kimbrell, who organized events
in the library. She was on a first name basis with professors from several VCU departments and with many of our long time library donors. Edgar MacDonald, the Cabell Scholar who we considered a staff member in Special Collections and
Archives, enjoyed his conversations with her. And he relied on her for helping him with his
computer problems – he often said she “worked miracles.” She
was also helpful to students on their projects – and not just on comic book
topics but on other subject areas of we had holdings of in our department. Over
the years, we employed dozens of student workers in the department, including
interns and part-time workers. Many of them helped Cindy over the years with
the management of the comic books and with projects like setting up exhibits.
They were lucky to have worked with her too.
Cindy and I spent a lot of time working together at the
Special Collections and Archives reference desk, which gave us a chance to get
to know each other incredibly well. Whenever I struggled to articulate a vague
thought or remember the name of an actor or some well-known personality, she
could decipher my meaning from just a few words. It was like she could read my
mind.
Her last year was a tough one. She had a stroke in January of 2022
and had to leave work to recover at home. She was in and out of the hospital
that year. I hoped her health would improve. I kept wishing a nurse or doctor
would spend more time with her to help in her rehabilitation. I last spoke to
her just before Christmas in December of 2022. She was in the hospital. She died
early the next month. Her brother Stephen was so helpful to her that last year
(let alone years before that). And I was so glad that there was an outpouring
of love and remembrances of her after death was announced. She would have been
very touched and appreciative of the many things people said and wrote about
her. I think she leaves two legacies – the Comic Arts collection (which they
should name after her) and the friendships she made during her life.
The James Branch Cabell Library on the Monroe Park campus of
VCU. The Special Collection and Archives department is located on the fourth
floor of the library.
One of my favorite memories of Cindy was when I would get to
the Cabell library early – which was not often -- and see Cindy sitting on the low
concrete wall in front of the library not far from Floyd Ave. where she parked.
This was usually just before the library opened at 7:30. She would be
surrounded by little birds and several squirrels. She would feed them before
she entered the library. They would often follow her as she walked down the
sidewalk to the library. I told her a few times that she looked like Mother
Nature surrounded by happy animals. She liked that.
Often, long time co-workers become good friends. I was lucky
to know Cindy, to benefit from her work as a colleague, and to have her as a
friend. I still miss her, and I know I am not alone in that feeling. Right now,
the Special Collections and Archives department is undergoing a major expansion
and renovation to the space it occupies on the fourth floor in the Cabell Library. Cindy used to
joke that Special Collections and Archives would keep growing and
eventually take over the flour floor – well, she was right. They are close to doing that with
these renovations. The department will be closed until 2028. After they reopen, visit the
department and ask for a comic book or a graphic novel. Or donate a comic book
or a related item in her name. That would be a wonderful way to remember and celebrate
her life and work.
- Ray
Below are links to articles and other online sources about Cindy and her work with the Comic Arts Collection at VCU.
Later in 2023, a book entitled Comic Books, Special Collections, and the Academic Library was published. It was edited by Kate Morris and Brian Flota, librarians at James Madison University. The book is dedicated to Cindy. The dedication reads:
Dedication
We would like to dedicate this book to Cindy Jackson, a highly respected member of the Comics Librarian community, who passed away at the age of 53 as this book was being completed. In her role at Virginia Commonwealth University, she oversaw the growth of one of the largest and most important academic library comics collections in the United States. Cindy was instrumental in guiding the editors of this book when they initially began collecting comics at James Madison University. She, along with Yuki Hibben and Andrea Kohashi, wrote the first chapter of this book, "Collecting Comics: Transcending Barriers and Building Community."
After Cindy died there were several online articles about her life and work. They included one by VCU News, Cindy Jackson, who oversaw VCU’s Comic Arts Collection, dies at 53 which was very thorough; another by VCU Libraries entitled: Queen of Comics Cindy Jackson, who oversaw VCU’s Comic Arts Collection, leaves legacy that was also good. She used to call herself jokingly the Queen of Comics. The Commonwealth Times published Influential, passionate VCU Comic Arts Collection Specialist dies at 53. There was also an excellent post on Facebook about Cindy that can be accessed HERE. In 2011, Cindy and Celina Williams, a long time worker in Special Collections and Archives who worked with Cindy on the comic book collection, were profiled by Rich Griset in Style Weekly in a cover story called Secret Powers: The massive comic-book collection on the campus of VCU isn’t just one of Richmond’s best-kept secrets, it’s one of the largest in the country. Lastly, VCU News has done several stories on the comic book collection over the years and often they included Cindy in the articles. They can be found HERE.
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