Thirty years ago this July, I interviewed for one of three department head positions at the Oshkosh Public Library. The openings first came to my attention as I browsed through an issue of Library Journal while sitting at my desk at the G. & C. Merriam Company in Springfield, Massachusetts. After 2½ years as an Assistant Editor/Editorial Librarian, of feeling increasingly closed-in by a deskbound office environment, I craved a change of scene.
One of these jobs has got to be mine, I recall telling myself.
The timing of this job ad couldn’t have been more opportune. I was less than a week away from traveling to a Nelson family reunion at Lake Spread Eagle in Florence County, Wisconsin, less than a 3-hour drive from Oshkosh. (One of my Merriam colleagues waggishly asked, “Spread Eagle?! What’s that, a singles club?”) Before leaving Springfield, I scheduled an interview with Director Richard Miller, then just a month or two on the job.
I remember very little of the specifics of the interview, which included no other staff members. In fact, outside of the Administrative Assistant, I don’t recall being introduced to anyone else. The only question I clearly remember Miller asking was the final one.
“Which one interests you the most?”
He had three positions to fill: Head of Circulation Services, South Side Branch Librarian, and Head of Extension Services.
My decision was influenced by a very engaging course on outreach services taught by Wendell Wray, one of my favorite professors at the University of Pittsburgh library school.
“Head of Extension,” I replied, after a brief but thoughtful pause.
Two weeks later I was offered the job – and eagerly accepted. We agreed up an August 28th start date.
The choice of this position proved to be a rewarding one in many ways, not the least of which was the opportunity to work and become friends with Shelia Neubauer, whose retirement dinner JoAnna and I attended Saturday evening.
Shelia was hired as the secretary in Extension Services in 1971, when she was 19 years old and just a year out of high school. Her friendliness, ebullience, and, most importantly, her loyalty to the library paved the way for a very smooth transition on my part. I sensed that she had become the de facto interim department head during the summer. Although she filled this role very competently, she expressed relief to have a new boss on board, though with one reservation. Years later, I learned from one of my predecessors in Extension that Shelia thought I might not be up to the job because I was “too young”.
Just call me “Baby Face Nelson”.
You could say that Extension Services was not just a library department but also a state of mind. When I arrived, the staff had already developed a strong camaraderie, no doubt the result of Shelia’s personality, which always gave off a warm glow, and her infectious joie de vivre.
Shelia loves to tell a good story. What might take the average person less than a minute to relate will become a full-blown routine from her perspective, complete with allegretto hand motions and boop-boop-a-doop vocal inflections. One day, after a particularly involved story – this was during my first year on the job – she mentioned that she had taken a new sinus medication which she didn’t like because it made her “too squirrelly”.
LeRoy Stahle, the county bookmobile driver at the time, turned to the rest of us and, with perfect comic timing, asked, “How can you tell the difference?”
There were a number of times when the Extension staff went out together during the evening for “a few drinks”. On one memorable occasion, a giant zucchini from LeRoy’s garden accompanied us on our bar-hopping trek. It probably endured a rougher night than any of the rest of us. This is also the same night when LeRoy, very uncharacteristically, stripped down to his underwear and dove into Diana and Mike Stritzel’s above-ground pool. (Diana has been working at the Oshkosh Public Library since 1974 and has no immediate retirement plans. Mike, on the other hand, is retiring from Mercury Marine in Fond du Lac in two weeks after working there for 34 years.)
Shelia’s retirement dinner took place at Primo’s, an Oshkosh restaurant that first opened for business as Marco’s in the early 1980s. (Their fondly remembered rack of lamb remains one of my favorite entrees of all time.) JoAnna and I arrived a few minutes past 6:00, the start of the designated cocktail hour. Although set up and ready to go for a party of 45, the banquet room was deserted.
“You don’t think they changed the location at the last minute?” JoAnna asked me.
When we peered into the bar, we initially didn’t see any familiar faces – not until we took ten or so steps into this area. We greeted Rick Bowman, the recently retired Business Manager at OPL, and his wife Mary. Both JoAnna and I marveled at how great they looked. Nearly 22 years since we had last seen them, they appear to have hardly aged. Rick looks a little bit fuller in the face and, like me, sports significant touches of gray at the temples. Mary made me feel as though it was still 1986. (Of course, maybe our filed-away brain images age correspondingly without our being aware of it. But who wants to hear that!)
Rick, Shelia, & Mary
During our conversation with Rick and Mary, the activity in the bar began to resemble that of a class reunion. Personally, I felt like a nervous suitor awaiting the guest of honor, but once Shelia bounded up to us to say hello, it truly was old times again – 22 years being washed away like a defenseless sand castle. I could have almost convinced myself that a certain wedding day was just a week away.
Looking around the banquet room during dinner, I counted ten people who have worked at OPL for more than 25 years – and for 8 of them more than 30 years. And they are just the current employees. It would be interesting to learn how many large public libraries in Wisconsin – Appleton, La Crosse, Eau Claire, for example – have a similar roll call of longevity.
And here I, the Retiring Guy, think that my 8 years at OPL and 22 years at Middleton are a big deal. I’m just an Average Guy.
Shelia, on the other hand, will always be a very special person. It's very hard not to be happy in her presence.
Shelia, Paul, Diana, LeRoy, Peter
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