Olga was chairman of the Library Board when I moved to Commerce in 1995, and because I had applied for the director’s position while I was still in California, I was interviewed by the board the day after my mother and I completed our cross-country drive. Fizzy with relief at being here after eight days on the road, I tried hard to be serious and focus on the questions board members asked me. (How did I feel about security? What would I do if someone objected to a book? Did I think silence was important in a library?) After they sent me out of the room so they could confer, I worked on figuring out how to use the new “computerized card catalog” that had just been installed. What if they came out and discovered that I couldn’t do it? To forestall this possibility, I stuck my head in the door periodically and asked them, “Are you going to hire me? Did I get the job?” And every time I did this, Olga laughed. I knew I’d found a kindred spirit.
When she called and told me I had the job (whew!), I asked her to come to dinner with me and bring me up to speed. My predecessor, Paden Hendrick, had passed away, and I needed to learn as much as I could before I started work. Olga was happy to go to dinner (she would have none of the “Mrs. Lacey” thing, so we were on a first-name basis in about 20 seconds), and when the maitre d’ asked where we wanted to be seated – “Smoking or non-smoking?” – she replied, “Drinking!” and ordered a Tom Collins on the spot. She then began to give me the informational underpinnings I would need when I began work.
I had to learn from others about her history as a columnist for The Jackson Herald. “Around Town” was a popular column for a long time, relished for its wit, its literacy, and its author’s appreciation of life in her adopted country, the South. And I had to learn from her generous adult children about some of her challenges and experiences as the mother of six children: five daughters and a son.
But I learned from her about a passion for the written word that was so strong it outlasted her eyesight, and so determined that she found avenues to books for all but the last few years of her life — and spent a good many years of that life creating avenues to reading for the rest of her community. She was truly one for the books, in every sense of those words, so I like to think she’s digging into a good mystery as I write this, having checked it out of a heavenly library.
Susan Harper is retired, lives in Commerce and volunteers with the Commerce Public Library and the Jackson County Literacy Program.
