Terry Golway’s Letter to Librarians

Terry Golway’s I NEVER DID LIKE POLITICS: How Fiorello La Guardia Became America’s Mayor, and Why He Still Matters is a delightful celebration of one of America’s greatest politicians and a source of inspiration for our equally challenging times. As entertaining as the man himself, Golway captures the enduring appeal of one of America’s greatest leaders.

Golway even highlights La Guardia’s special connection to NYPL! He writes, “And beginning in early 1942, Fiorello LaGuardia became one of the station’s [WNYC] most successful and recognizable hosts with a morale-boosting Sunday morning program called ‘Talk to the People.’ The program usually began with a rousing rendition of ‘The Marine Hymn.’ As the music faded, listeners heard LaGuardia’s unmistakable voice, greeting them with a phrase that became his trademark: ‘Patience and fortitude’ the names he attached to the stone lions flanking the entrance to the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue a decade earlier.” excerpt from I NEVER DID LIKE POLITICS

We’re excited to share with you a letter from Golway about his fond memories of his childhood library and his celebration of libraries moving into the future!

I NEVER DID LIKE POLITICS is available for download on Edelweiss know more. LibraryReads votes are due by January 1st.

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My daily walk takes me past a pretty busy construction site across the street from a middle school and just a few hundred yards away from the center of lovely Maplewood, N.J. There used to be a library on the site, a mid-20th century two-story brick building where my kids got their first library cards and from which they borrowed their first books.

Now it’s gone. Sad, right?

Actually, no, not sad at all. Fantastic, in fact. Because the construction site bears a sign announcing that from the muck and chaos will soon rise an impressive new building that will house, yes, a new library, this one built and designed for the 21st century and beyond.

Ah, the site does my heart good as does the walk!

The new library will look nothing like its somewhat staid and generic predecessor. The artist’s rendition shows a building of spacious interiors, lots of light, and plenty of places to connect with the world beyond Maplewood’s borders.

Oh, and there’s space for books, too. It looks lovely. And very 21st Century.

All of this is a far cry from the library of my childhood in the Tottenville section of Staten Island. I can still see it now, an imposing brick and masonry building in the classical revival style, built in 1904 with Andrew Carnegie’s money, back when Tottenville was a rural outpost within the boundaries of New York City. I spent many happy after-school hours in that fine old building, looking for books about politics and sports. By some amazing coincidence, I’ve spent the last 50 years writing for a living, mostly about…politics and sports. Thank you, Tottenville librarians!

The old Carnegie library of my youth and the new library of my town’s future resemble each other no more than a Model T looks like a Tesla. And that is as it should be. The new Maplewood library is meant for the digital age, a world that Andrew Carnegie and his beneficiaries could not have imagined; the Tottenville library was designed for words printed on pieces of paper bound together, a technique hundreds of years old.

But there’s one thing that the old and new have in common: Librarians the heart and soul of our collective commitment to mass literacy and the dissemination of knowledge. Without librarians, the buildings are mere repositories.

I can’t say I remember the names and faces of the librarians from my Tottenville days, although I do remember the librarian from my years at Monsignor Farrell High School. He was a member of the Christian Brothers, a small man who also taught English and clearly loved good writing. He also was a bit of a stickler for the rules–especially the one about returning the books you borrowed on the date stamped inside the cover. I remember handing over a book that was, shall we say, a bit late. “Brother,” I said sheepishly and in a library-like whisper, “this book is slightly overdue.”

It was, in fact, a year overdue.

The good brother looked inside the book.

“SLIGHTLY overdue?” he said in a voice better suited to the sidelines of a football game than a library.

“SLIGHTLY overdue,” he said again, somehow even louder. He put out his hand. I paid my fine.

But I didn’t leave in disgrace. After all, I had more books to borrow!

The good brother actually was a wonderful guide to our book collection, and that experience er, not the SLIGHTLY overdue bit–has been replicated thousands of times in the years since. I’ve been to traditional and specialized libraries all over the country and quietly blessed the librarians who’ve helped me. They clearly loved the idea of guiding people to sources of knowledge, information and inspiration. And they often steered me to places I had no intention of visiting. But they knew I’d be interested.

And that’s another reason why I’m excited about the new library coming to my home town.
Because it’s not just a building. It’s a place where librarians will be working. And they’ll be doing exactly what they’ve been doing for centuries: Guiding us to knowledge and inspiring us to open our minds and explore new ideas. Some things, it turns out, don’t really change all that much. And that, too, does my heart good.

Terry Golway

I NEVER DID LIKE POLITICS: How Fiorello La Guardia Became America’s Mayor, and Why He Still Matters by Terry Golway; 9781250285782; 2/20/24