A few weeks after the new year begins, I will box up the last of my personal items from my office on the Morrill Memorial Library’s second floor. The elegant 123-year old mahogany-lined walls, nearly floor-to-ceiling bookcases, leaded glass, and six-foot windows in the Director’s office have been home to me for the past twelve years. When I lived closer to the library (in Norfolk until 2012 and Norwood until 2018), I would often drop in to the library to spend a weekend afternoon. I spent many more darkened hours on weeknights surrounded by urgent library work. Yet, any time of the day, I was satisfied in the interior light of an institution that has provided Norwood residents with vibrant library service for well over a century.

Many times over the past decade, I would rise from my chair in my quiet office, one in which I had just spent hours at my computers on spreadsheets and memos. I would glance around the entrance and tall wooden office door to watch the work of my peers – those librarians whose commitment and perseverance always astound me. I would smile at the morning gentleman or the group of afternoon mothers who surrounded our jigsaw puzzle table, finishing yet another 1000-piece challenge. I would hear captivated children sing and clap during yet another story hour in the Simoni Room. I would listen to our tired, but dutiful grandfather clock chime the hour. One of my favorite things to do was to lead visitors on a tour of the second floor, as I pointed out the beauty of the stained-glass windows, multiple fireplaces, and details of the 19th Century architecture. I never neglected to expound on the generosity of the Morrill family, and I could endlessly gaze at the beauty of this library given to the Town in 1898 in honor of a daughter, a young Sarah Bond Morrill, who died at the age of 23.

In January 1898, when thirty-two-year-old “Jennie” Hewitt spent her first day in the new Morrill Memorial Library, she was accompanied by one assistant. Both of their salaries totaled a bit over $300 per year. Ms. Hewett came from Canton, MA, where she had worked at the Canton library. Many libraries did not require a master’s degree in librarianship in 1898, and Hewett did not have one. However, the Norwood trustees were fully assured that Hewett would triumphantly lead the library through the turn of the 19th century.

And she did lead, for three more decades. By the time she retired in 1939 in her seventies, her staff had grown to seven assistants. The library’s holdings and circulation had increased by thousands, and the Morrill Memorial Library possessed what might have been the first Young Adult (Intermediate) Room in the Commonwealth. She was far ahead of her time, recognizing the importance of community involvement and her own professional work outside of Norwood. Norwood had weathered WWI, the Pandemic of 1918, and the economic crash of 1929. Upon her retirement, the Daily Messenger, one of Norwood’s newspapers, awarded Hewitt Forty-One Gold Service Stars for her 41 years of service. The townspeople saluted her, and the trustees regaled her.

In 1939, Edna Phillips stepped into Ms. Jennie’s shoes. Edna was, perhaps, the most professional and accomplished director the library has known. She started her career as a librarian near her home in Edgewater, New Jersey. Dutifully, she served in WWI from 1918-1919 in both France and Germany with the YMCA. She returned home to continue her work as a librarian in East Orange, New Jersey. Obviously, both courageous and energetic, Edna was also intelligent and was awarded a Carnegie Fellowship at Columbia University. She came to Massachusetts as the director of the Sawyer Free Library in Gloucester.

While working in Norwood from 1939-1962, she was professionally connected across the country. She served on the American Library Association Council and traveled to conferences in San Francisco, Chicago, and Florida. She spoke locally across the Commonwealth and regionally across New England at conferences and workshops. She contributed book lists on the cultural achievement of the North American Indian and led seminars on immigrant relations.

Unfortunately, the Massachusetts Legislature abandoned the practice of delaying mandatory retirement at the age of 65, and Ms. Edna was forced to retire at the age of 71 in 1962. In a tribute by the Norwood Woman’s Club, it states that “for her graciousness and serenity [she] is a shining example of effective womanhood.” Like Jane Hewitt before her, Edna was a devoted public servant and beloved librarian. When she passed away in 1968, she left a sizeable portion of her will. In the library’s renovation in 2001, the second floor’s reference room was dedicated as the Edna Phillips Reference Room.

From 1963 to 1968, Charles Joyce was perhaps the most notorious library director, as library directors go. His directorship was marked by finishing a complete renovation and expansion of the library in 1964, doubling the library’s size and moving the front door close to Walpole Street. He hired a staff of master-degreed librarians who dared to move the library far into the 20th Century. In the winter of 1968, however, Joyce and all of his professional staff resigned over a controversy with the library board of trustees.

In September of 1968, Barbara Jordan from Pittsburgh, PA, was appointed director. She was originally a Norwood native, and upon her return to Norwood, she brought 35 years of experience to the library. Just two brief years later, she retired from the library. Her achievements were acquiring a lending library of art and a microfilm reader.

Virginia Pauwels arrived in the winter of 1971 from Texas. During her tenure, she published a short pamphlet which was a criticism of Henry Ward Beecher’s Norwood or Village Life in New England.

Norwood was a fictional town of 5,000 in western Massachusetts, written by Beecher in 1868. Whether or not the Town of Norwood was named after this fictional account is doubted by many. Pauwels retired in the winter of 1973 to take a position in southern California. Interestingly, she had just attended a conference there and missed the “vastness of the West.”

Carl Himmelsbach succeeded Pauwels as library director in the fall of 1973. From New York state, Mr. Himmelsbach received his master’s degree from the University of Rhode Island and lived in Franklin when appointed. He and librarians in Dedham and Westwood were instrumental in developing a library in the Norfolk County House of Corrections. Himmelsbach oversaw enormous technological changes in the 80s and encouraged the expansion of the outreach program. With trustee Eleanor Monahan, Himmelsbach developed the successful literacy tutor program that is a now a shining example in the Commonwealth. In 1988, he retired after 14 years of directorship.

Mary Phinney had come to Norwood as the Technical Services librarian in 1971, hailing from Amelia Island off the coast of Florida. To this day, Mary makes Norwood her home. When she was promoted in 1988 to the directorship, Mary quickly began work with the trustees to plan a major renovation project to the building, then nearly a century old in 1988. Mary, the trustees, and the Town’s building committee took a modern 1965 addition, one that took away from the beauty of the 1898 building, and planned a library that blended new technology and diverse collections with the library’s original classic architecture. Mary led the library through admission into the Minuteman Library System. She retired in 2008 after twenty years of directorship.

I take enormous pride in the honor of having been the eighth director of the Morrill Memorial Library in the past 123 years. My twelve year term of service in Norwood was not the longest, nor the shortest. I followed seven other passionate and dedicated directors, all public servants. I know that others with that same passion will come after me. In a few short weeks, that new director will be chosen, and his or her personal books, artwork, and photographs will make the 2nd-floor director’s office home to a new administration. I am assured that this new directorship will be with the same awe, passion, and dedication to serving the Town of Norwood.

Charlotte Canelli is the Director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, MA. Look for her article in the December 3, 2020 issue of the Transcript and Bulletin.