When my friend and mentor at WMUK Andy Robins, who was news director for more than two decades, passed suddenly on December 3rd, many of us gathered to share memories and honor him. I met Sean Kidd at that gathering, and I learned something about Andy I hadn’t known. Andy Robins and Sean Kidd shared a passion for collecting vintage fountain pens. There is a romance, a living history, to writing longhand with such a pen, Kidd told me. It is something lost with modern-day texting and emails.
“Andy had actually reached out to me because he found my website,” Kidd says. He runs The Portly Parson Pen Company. “I do vintage fountain pen restoration. I had an old Esterbrook that he was interested in, and so he reached out to me inquiring about this specific Esterbrook.”
Kidd invited Robins to his home to view this and other pens. The two ended up in long conversation about their shared interest, and soon after, traveling to various fountain pen conferences and shows together.
“There certainly is a great deal of nostalgia with vintage pens,” Kidd says. “There’s something about holding a pen that could have been held by Army generals—you just don’t know the love letters that were written home from World War II. There’s so much rich history there.”
Kidd points out that, aside from the nostalgia and history of these pens, they are also environmentally friendly. Rather than the disposable pens popular today, the vintage pens can be reused again and again by refilling their ink sacs and cartridges.
Over time, the two friends became pen pals, exchanging letters written with vintage fountain pens. While some collectors collect but never use, Robins and Kidd believed in the grace of cursive writing with the vintage pens.
“My personal philosophy is pens were meant to be written with,” Kidd says. “Even the oldest pens I have, I have restored them to use them, to give them their soul back. Andy and I would write together, because we would lament the digital age. It’s not that it doesn’t have its place, but to receive one of those letters in the mail—somebody has taken the time to sit down and put pen to paper with you in mind.”
Kidd is the Westwood United Methodist Church pastor serving in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Robins full-time career at WMUK began in 1985. He led the news team for more than two decades, from 1998 until his retirement in 2021.
