“As a kid, I loved finding the ‘magic’ book. Oh, I loved it. I still love finding the ‘magic’ book.
When I was a little girl, I would go to the public library on Saturday mornings with my father. One day in 1968, we showed up as usual and the librarian had kept a copy of “Harriet the Spy.” I was the first person in town to read it. I read that book over and over again. I probably should have bought it, but my mother didn’t believe in buying books.
I grew up in northern New Hampshire, in a French Canadian mill town. When I came here almost 40 years ago, there were still a lot of things that reminded me of home and I liked that. People are so kind here. I worked as a High School Librarian for 39 years at York High School. Now, I’m retired and spend time here at Dyer Library as a Substitute Librarian.
First of all, I read and eat bonbons each day. I didn’t know if you knew that or not. That’s all you do. All day long.
Okay, fine, that's not actually how it is. Wouldn't it be nice though! Joking aside, you can usually find me stamping out books and talking to wonderful people. I get to do a little bit of everything, honestly, so no day is the same and I always liked that.
There have certainly been some challenges along the way. It was difficult, that working mom thing. That’s hard. You have to make some decisions and obviously with those decisions you sometimes make mistakes.
My two children live away. My daughter is 37 and lives in Australia with her husband and child. She always wanted to be somebody different, so that’s where she went. My son, he’s 33. He lives in San Antonio but he’s coming home soon and I’m excited to see him. The time zone difference is so hard to remember. Texas is an hour behind us. Australia is 14 hours ahead of us.
At work, it’s hard to keep up with the technology thing. I find it challenging to see how some people have become using technology and social media. I’ve learned to go to YouTube to find stuff, but I’m more of a print person. There’s just such a big generation gap.
Things are also rewarding. There are people who are older who come in who never had time to read growing up, and now they are voracious readers. There are people who come in asking for book suggestions and I help them. I sometimes still run into my kids' friends who come into the library.
Years ago, when I worked at York High School, the Senior English kids had to write a paper in APA style. We spent a lot of time on that. I have a former student who now has a PhD from Georgetown. She wrote an article that was peer reviewed!
It sounds silly, doesn’t it? A librarian getting excited about reading. But I was proud. I love teaching people. That’s the best part of my job, then and now.”
