Art Herman enjoyed people

Art Herman’s calling card was a rectangular sticker the size of two postage stamps.

It had Herman’s name and that of Graybar, the electrical company where he spent his career as a salesman.

Thanks to Herman’s antic sense of humor, the stickers ended up in funny places. Clients around the Inland Northwest would find them on the bottom of office equipment or stuck to the sides of electrical boxes. After Herman retired from his 47-year career as a Graybar employee, the stickers went international, turning up on cruise ships and in surprising places around the world.

The ongoing prank was a favorite among customers, friends and family.

“He really enjoyed people,” said his son,Kim Herman. “He really had a good working relationship with a lot of people.”

Herman died Nov. 5 after several years on kidney dialysis. He was 87.

Even though he spent much of the work week traveling, Herman was a family man, always at the center of family gatherings. For many years, the family would decamp each weekend to Twin Lakes, Idaho, where the family had built a cabin. The family also celebrated holidays and birthdays together.

While Herman was friendly, he was never a loudmouth, said Modern Electric Water Co. manager Mike Baker.

“You talk to him for a couple minutes and you knew he just genuinely liked people,” Baker said. “I almost considered him like a dad. I really miss him.”

When Baker moved to the area in 1992 to manage Modern Electric, Herman was the president of Modern Electric’s board of directors. Soon after moving, Baker found himself confined to bed because of major leg surgery. He couldn’t stand long enough to cook dinner.

Every evening for about a month, Herman would come over with a hot meal that Herman’s wife, Nicky, had made, Baker remembers. It meant so much to Baker, who was new to Spokane Valley and didn’t have friends or family in the area.

“He really helped me get through that,” Baker said.

Herman was on Modern Electric’s board for 20 years. In 2001, Modern Electric named its substation on North Locust Road for Herman.

“It was almost a no-brainer. Art had put so much into Modern Electric as a board member. He cared a lot about the Valley and the people.”

Herman moved to the Spokane Valley when he was 9. Before that, his family lived in the Odessa-Ritzville area. In a childhood photo, Herman shows up as a speck on his uncle’s gigantic wheat combine, said to be the largest west of the Mississippi. The Herman family moved to Spokane Valley to catch the homebuilding boom, as Herman’s father worked as a carpenter.

The family settled into a home on Bowdish Road.

Herman was fond of telling stories about growing up in the Valley. Larry Herman remembers his father telling stories about getting pulled on sleds down East Sprague Avenue in the winter. He still visited with classmates from the former Opportunity Grade School.

Herman started working for Graybar when he was 19, as a stockroom clerk. In 1938, he married Cherie and built a house next to his parents’ place. The couple had four children: Terry, Kim, Larry and Cheryl. Terry died in 2002.

Herman turned down several promotions at Graybar because he didn’t want to relocate his children, Kim Herman said. When Cherie died after a long illness in 1960, Herman wanted to keep the family together, his children said. Their grandmother came and stayed with the family when Herman traveled.

Even though Herman traveled, he made sure to spend time with them.

Sometimes, Herman would hook a buggy to one of their horses and take his children for rides around Spokane Valley. A rite of passage for Herman’s sons was getting old enough to join the annual elk hunt in the Blue Mountains.

“It was social,” Larry Herman said of the hunting trips.

Herman and his hunting buddies would play poker. In the many years Herman went on the trips, he only got one elk.

Herman met Nicky at Leo’s, a dinner club in Worley, Idaho. Nicky and two friends were there for the smorgasbord. As she remembers it, Herman danced with all three of the women.

“I thought he was a good dancer and a nice person,” Nicky Herman recalls.

A few months later, he looked her up in Colfax, where she was working for the health department. The two married in 1962 and blended their households.

“He really liked to have a good time. He always had a big smile,” Nicky Herman said.

After retiring from Graybar in 1982, Art and Nicky began traveling extensively. Herman would take Nicky fishing, although the family always laughed because the boat would get low on gas after a few hours. Apparently, Herman wouldn’t fill it up all the way so that he could cut the trips short, since he wasn’t a big fisherman.

Art and Nicky took trips in their motor home. They would also go on cruises, their favorite destination being Tahiti, Nicky said. In their pictures from the cruises, Art is smiling and usually wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

Herman was going full tilt, enjoying retirement until his health began to fail several years ago, Nicky Herman said.

He was on kidney dialysis for several years. Yet even as his health deteriorated, Herman remained positive. Cheryl Olson said she was with her father two days before he died. He’d eaten a hearty dinner, and Olson thought he was getting ready for bed. Instead, she found him tidying up the room at the care facility where he spent his last weeks.

She teased him. He laughed.

“He was such a kind man,” Olson said.

Even though Herman began suffering from dementia, he would return every smile and offer up a cheery, “You bet.”

“Even up to the last day I saw him, he was always smiling,” Kim Herman said.