Thanks to The Straight Dope, it seems that children’s book author Rosemary Wells has joined the likes of those, like Mark Twain, the rumors of whose death are “greatly exaggerated”.
I suspect that there is more than one person named “Rosemary Wells” in the U.S. and that some of them are still alive.
However, THE Rosemary Wells undoubtedly died back in about 2001. First off, I live in a nearby suburb and I know that the Tooth Museum (although still advertised on the Deerfield, IL web page) is no longer extant. Second, I have talked to people who know the family (I was trying to locate either her husband or one of her children who might know what happened to the museum material, but I was unsuccessful) and I can pretty much guarantee that she has, lamentably, died.
A lesson to all you SD fans-- beware of your own hidden assumptions, lest you follow in my sorry footsteps!
Indeed, there are undoubtedly multiple people named Rosemary Wells, some surely dead, others surely alive (switchboard.com knows about 28 of them, probably mostly in the latter condition). Little did I expect that there would be two of them having achieved national prominence in issues relating to young children-- one the proprietor of the famous Tooth Fairy Museum, refered to in the recent SDSTAFF report, the other a prolific author of children’s books. The former dead, the latter alive.
So the error was entirely mine in assuming that Rosemary Wells, dental curator was in fact one and the same with Rosemary Wells, author (http://www.rosemarywells.com/). Live and (maybe) learn.
That’s good to know. Rosemary Wells (the author) was one of my kids’ favorite authors. As a visitor to the place when it housed Teletype my favorite verse was
We’re on the way to Skokie
Everything is okey-dokey