Rollman wasn’t one to sit on his Duff

I think the first time I wrote about Ed Rollman was in 1985 when he announced to the public through a letter to me that he was never going to run for office again.

He was a Puget Sound Naval Shipyard painter who had run for the Bremerton School Board, county coroner and the Bremerton City Council with no success and finally got the message, he said.

“The people do not want Ed Rollman to represent us,” he declared.

He was wrong, of course, because some years later he was elected a Bremerton city councilman and was a pretty darned good one.

He used to wear what I called his pirate shirt when he campaigned — white silk with long baggy sleeves.

Ed had a hobby — tracking down famous people who were born in Bremerton.

He contacted me in 1986 to tell me he had discovered that Howard Duff — television’s most famous “Sam Spade” — was born in Bremerton at 328 S. Lafayette Ave. on Nov. 24, 1917.

He had lived with his parents, the Carl Duffs, at 421 S. Cambrian Ave. until 1924, when the family moved to Seattle after his grandfather, Edward Duff, a merchant and former mayor of Charleston, “hung himself at high noon.”

The grandfather, Ed said he learned from old timers who still lived in the neighborhood, had bought a load of cigarettes for resale at a higher price. But on the day he made his purchase, the government put a federal tax on cigarettes and he was ruined.

Ed learned that Duff’s nephew was Seattle veterinarian Dr. John Duff and called him. Dr. Duff confirmed the grandfather’s suicide, but said he shot himself. He never heard the cigarette story, only that he had financial problems.

Ed was gung-ho for honoring the actor with a Howard Duff Day in November or asking him to be grand marshal in the Armed Forces parade. Sports entrepreneur Bill Camp was interested in staging a Howard Duff film festival during Armed Forces time and contacted Duff who agreed to come if he was paid $1,000 for his expenses.

Camp said he’d put up the $1,000 but was turned down cold about making Duff the grand marshal.

The parade organizers wanted admirals, not over-the-hill actors. Co-marshals? asked Ed.

No, said the organizers.

Ed got off on another kick, of preserving the places in Bremerton where famous people had lived, but in 1988, he got word that Howard Duff would be coming to Seattle to appear with other native sons and daughters of Washington for the dedication of the new Trade and Convention Center.

Ed went to the event, tape recorder in hand, and managed a brief interview with the actor. I wrote a news story on that, which I no longer have — as I have my columns from their onset in 1965 — and I don’t remember what was said.

Duff died in 1992, and by that time Ed had a new project — luring presidential candidates to Bremerton. His research revealed, he said, that there had been six previous visits by presidents or would-be presidents: Theodore Roosevelt, May 23, 1903; William Howard Taft, Oct. 10, 1911, FDR, Sept. 22, 1942 and Aug. 12, 1944; Truman, June 10, 1948; Jimmy Carter, late 1949 to 1950.

Then-Lt. j.g. Carter lived for three weeks on-board the submarine USS Pomfret (SS391) inside the shipyard at some point during that period.

Now, Ed is gone, and I’ll miss him. Who will pick up the baton for preserving places where famous people lived? The home of the late Scientologist-author L. Ron Hubbard, 1212 Gregory Way; the home of former Navy Comdr. Lloyd Bucher of USS Pueblo fame, 132-B Magnuson Way, and composer Quincy Jones’ home on Eder Street.

Ah, Ed, there’ll never by another like you.

Adele Ferguson can be reached at PO Box 69, Hansville, WA, 98340.

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