Losing a Friend and Colleague

He was almost eighty years old, but the call on that Sunday afternoon informing me of his death was still a shock. Don had been on vacation for three weeks and was scheduled to return to work on Monday. I still remember the first day I met him because it was my first day at work at SFA. Even though I intended to arrive early, several librarians were ahead of me as I rushed to the university wide faculty meeting held at the beginning of each new academic year. "There's Bernice, there's the new librarian." I was greeted by Don, Elizabeth Wallace, and several other new colleagues. as we walked together to the meeting. That was 32 meetings ago, and I'm certainly not the new librarian any more.

Back then I worked in Technical Services, and I soon got to know Don well. No one was more persistent than Don in making sure that the materials needed by his faculty and students in the sciences were ordered, checked in, and processed as quickly as possible. Waiting for the invoice to arrive or setting aside a tough cataloging problem was not an option if one of Don's students needed the book, geological survey, or map that he was tracking down. Music collection responsibilities were added to Don's job description a few years later. For Don this was not a burden, it was a joy. The sciences were Don's job and he was very good at it, but music was his passion.

I joined Don, Marty Turnage, Carol Scamman, Kayce Halstead and others in the Reference Department in 1991. There were no online end-user databases in those days. Printed indexes for undergraduates and expensive Dialog database searches done by librarians for graduate students and faculty were the order of the day. I worked with Don on Tuesday nights. We were almost always busy, but there were short breaks between questions when I could ask Don to show me how to use one of the reference books or compare notes with him on vacations to Big Bend or Mesa Verde.

On Tuesdays, Don would come in at 7:30 a.m. and work until 10 p.m. He took off an hour for lunch , but often just ate a sandwich in his office for supper before joining me at the Reference Desk at 6 p.m. The rest of us took afternoons off when we were scheduled to work until 10 p.m., but Don didn't start taking the afternoons off until he was forced to. There was some newfangled rule about not earning more than 80 hours of comp time per year. Ten comp days for weekends plus a year's worth of Tuesday afternoons added up to considerably more than 80 hours! Don complained about his new schedule for weeks, but a few years later turned down the option of having no night duty every other semester. By this time, being free on Tuesday afternoons was essential!

Fifteen years past the age when most people retire, Don was still arriving at his office shortly after 7:30 each morning. Don enjoyed traveling and going to operas and other musical performances. He had plenty of vacation time to do that. He still loved his work and was not ready to retire. He wasn't up on all the newest technology. He couldn't name the newest pop stars. He didn't blog or twitter. But for some students and faculty in chemistry, geology, or music, he wasn't just the best person to ask, he was often the only person that could help them.

Don was a valued colleague and friend. I won't soon forget him, and neither will many others.

Bernice Wright bwright@sfasu.edu rm. 202j 936.468.1528 Subjects - Agriculture, Forestry, Human Sciences, Human Services, Speech/Communication