By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
At the end of this year, the Wood County District Public Library will lose 50-plus years of experience when it says goodbye to AJ Heilman, administrative assistant, and Mary Boone, public relations and events coordinator.
A bit of library history will leave when they retire. Both were the first incumbents in their positions, which were created to address changing mission of the public library. “Both are legacy positions,” Library Director Michael Penrod said.
The library is already working to find their successors. Before they advertised the openings, though, they spent some time figuring out just what the scope of their jobs were, and that turned out to be extensive.
“We will not be able to replace them,” Penrod said.
“We’ll find good people who will do good work in these jobs. Mary and AJ will be missed in years to come.”
AJ Heilman: ‘AJ’ stands for ‘all jobs’
Heilman grew up in rural Bowling Green, and remembers coming here as a child. She enjoyed reading scary stories and mysteries. “I still do.”
Heilman joined the library staff on Dec. 12, 1988, right after graduating from Bowling Green High School. She’d studied to be an executive secretary at Penta Career Center.
Elaine (Paulette) McEwen had only been on the job a year, when then Children’s Librarian Kathy East said she should have a secretary.
“That’s how it started,” Heilman said.
Back then there were no computers. The card catalog was literally that – a cabinet filled with drawers of 3-by-5-inch cards.
The layout was “topsy turvy,” Heilman said. With mysteries, science fiction, romance and other adult fiction on the east side of the first floor. The children’s area was upstairs with local history on the south side. All that changed when the library underwent a complete renovation 20 years ago.
The woman who had been working with the Friends of the Library left, and Heilman became the liaison with the group. Then in 1994, the Library Foundation was established, and she was involved in that group, which serves as a conduit for large donations and memorials.
McEwen used to say that “AJ” stood for “all jobs.”
That included handling scheduling for the groups and meeting rooms. Those duties have expanded over the years, and now include the Carter House across the street.
As part of her work with the foundation, she helps organize the annual auction, now called Novel Night.
For 10 years, it was held at Schedel Gardens in Elmore, and then moved into the library in 2019. The money raised all goes to purchase materials.
That event like so many others was canceled this summer, though a No-Show Novel Night appeal was done raising $103,235.
Managing these activities suits Heilman. “I’m a detail person. I like to make sure everything is in its place and just right. I get that from my Dad.”
Now instead of scheduling events in the library’s meeting rooms, she’s helping unload books from the return bins and shelving them there so they can quarantine before being put back into circulation.
With the expectation that this is how the library will operate for the next year or so, she decided this would be a good time to retire. Her plans are uncertain, though she expects within a few months, she’ll probably be looking for a part-time job.
Heilman knows she’ll return to the library as a patron, borrowing those mysteries that first brought her there.
Mary Boone: The library is her stage
Those events that Heilman organizes are the events that Boone publicizes.
The two work well together. For one they both love mysteries. “I think that’s why Mary and I hit it off so well,” Heilman said.
Boone has worked 22 years at the library. She admits being not quite sure of the dates.
She first took a part-time job in 1997 processing new books, then she moved to the reference desk.
At the time, she was finishing up her doctorate in theater studies at Bowling Green State University. She’d always assumed she’d have a career in academia.
She and her husband, Steve Boone, moved to Bowling Green in 1987 where he is on faculty in the Department of Theatre and Film.
But life, Mary Boone said, doesn’t always take you where you think you’re headed.
Boone said she found that she liked working at the reference desk for the same reasons she was attracted to teaching. “The big difference is people come to the library because they want to be here. They have a huge hunger for knowledge and want to pursue something that will better their lives. So that’s pretty much what kept me here.”
She did leave for a short period to take a job on campus, and that only confirmed how much she enjoyed working in the library.
McEwen reached out to her and asked if she’d be interested in a new position of doing publicity for the library.
Up to that point, she and her husband had been considering a move at some pint to be closer to their southern homeland – he’s from Alabama and she’s from North Carolina and they met at the University of Alabama at Birmingham while doing lights for a production of “The Crucible.”
The library job for Mary convinced them that “Bowling Green is home now,” she said.
And the library fit well with her background in theater. Though she started out wanting to be an actor, her interest evolved into directing. “What drew me was that I was able to have my hand in all the pieces of pie.”
And that’s the case with her job at the library. Just as in theater, she’s working with a creative and collaborative team.
One of the first tasks set before her was developing a visiting writers program – with a very small budget.
She didn’t know that she wasn’t supposed to contact a top mystery writer out of the blue, so that’s what she did reaching out to Margaret Maron.
Maron was a favorite of both her and library director McEwen. “By identifying writers that we both enjoyed we were able to say ‘we love your books and we want to share your books with readers in Bowling Green.’ That helped some of those people say ‘yes.’”
All they could offer was a good meal, a room, and “the best time they could possibly have in the Midwest,” she said.
Then Dianne Klein and Matt Reger came to McEwen and promoted the idea of a “one community, one book” program that was being implemented in other communities.
The Community Reads program was launched – and this had a budget.
The first guest in 2003 was Homer Hickam, the author of “Rocket Boys.”The program has been presented every year since except for one year spent raising money to bring in Sherman Alexie in 2017, and this year because of the pandemic.
As coronavirus settled in, Boone turned her attention to using social media to promote all the ways the library was still serving its patrons even if its doors were closed, or opened for a limited time.
“In the time I’ve been at the library, it’s become a community gathering place,” Boone said. “That’s the most trying thing about the time we’re living with right now. That’s on hold or going on online.”
Yet the way staff have adapted is testament “to these people, to their creativity and their passion.”
Boone said she’s been contemplating retirement for a few years, and now seemed the time to hunker at home, and then when possible to visit relatives.
Also, she’d like to be more active in the Women’s Club.
And back home, she said, “I have a roomful of yarn that I need to knit, and several rooms full of books.”
