Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Fathers, sons, and the Trenton man who never slept
World War II was still in full bloom in 1944 when Robert Quinn was 10 years old. He and his family recently moved to the corner of Ingham Avenue and Calhoun Street in Trenton, and his father, who was the first Capital City police officer (a job which preceded the state police taking over safety and security at the State House) took him on a walk about town.
“We went out past the back of our house, where there was an industrial complex,” Quinn told me. “There was the Essex Rubber Company back there, then we went down a dirt path next to what used to be the old Johnson Trolley Line, which ran to Witherspoon Street in Princeton. And then past all that was a homemade shack and my dad says, “You see in there? That’s where the man who never slept lives.’”
The man who never slept.
As you might imagine, this played in the imagination of 10-year-old Robert.
His dad then told him all he knew about Albert Herpin, who, by this time, had seen his fame wane over the years. But famous he was — as stated earlier, he was the man who never slept.
Herpin died three years later, but Quinn grew up, got married, had children, and worked for RCA Laboratories in Princeton.
But Herpin’s story — as told by his dad — stayed with him. He’d sometimes read up on it, sometimes see a piece in
about it. All these years, and it was always there, stuck in the crannies of his memory.
About three years ago, Quinn decided he wanted to write Herpin’s story, maybe for a magazine. So he began his research. It’s quite a tale. Briefly, then ...
“In 1903, Herpin wrote a letter to the editor of the Trenton Sunday Advertiser. It said my name is Albert Herpin, I live at 512 May Street, and I have never slept a wink in my life,” Quinn relayed. “The editor thought it was a joke, but Herpin included the fact he was employed by a county freeholder named Walter Phares as a grocer, so the editor asked Phares, and Phares confirmed the story.”
From there, the editor sent out a reporter to talk to Herpin, and the story was printed.
Herpin shortly became a national sensation.
Two years later, the editor of the New York World — guy by the name of Joseph Pulitzer — sent a team of doctors to Herpin’s shack, where he was observed round the clock for a week. He never slept. Herpin was employed by the city as a street sweeper, then did handyman jobs until his death. Before that, however, he was a man about town. He lived in the Mill Hill section, was educated, worked in the potteries, according to Quinn’s research.
But something happened that made him give that up. I asked Quinn what it was.
“Well, read the book,” he told me. (I also asked him if his research proved Herpin’s story, if he truly never slept. Again, the same answer. “Read the book.”)
As it turns out, Quinn’s research proved too much for a typical magazine article, so he decided to write a book about Herpin three years ago. One problem: He wasn’t much of a writer.
“I couldn’t give two diddlies about indentions and commas in 7th grade,” he said. “So I figured I should learn how to write.”
He signed up for a writing class in Hamilton, and the teacher there told him to turn his research into creative non-fiction. So he did. “But first I had to learn how to use Microsoft Word,” he noted.
Two years later, at the age of 82, the book — “The Man Who Never Slept” — is available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and also at local booksellers.
It’s the true story of Herpin’s life, but told through fictional devices. While the story is fictional, the facts about Herpin are all true.
All this because of a walk he took with his dad all those years ago.
“This is the bookend to that day,” Quinn said. “I dedicated this book to my dad.”
And it’s the only book he’ll ever write.
“I didn’t write it to become a Hemingway,” Quinn said. “This is bucket list stuff. I won’t write another thing.”
His dad passed away in 1962. I asked what he’d think of all this.
“I have a 91-year-old sister in Cream Ridge,” he told me. “I’d write chapters and mail it to her, and she’d say ‘Daddy would be so proud if he knew about this.’”