Grandma Stephenson—Mom’s mother, who had divorced her own alcoholic husband—gave me the money to save the house. We let the bank repossess the car. It wasn’t worth saving. My dad passed the hat in Hartley and came up with $800 to buy me a 1962 Chevy an old lady didn’t even drive in the rain. I had never driven a car in my life. I took driving lessons for a month and passed my driver’s test. I was twenty-eight years old.
The first place I drove that car was to the welfare office. I had a six-year-old daughter, a high school diploma, a medical history that can only be called a disaster, and a pile of debt. I didn’t have a choice. I told them, “I need help, but I’m only going to take it if you let me go to college.”
Thank goodness, welfare was different in those days. They agreed. I went straight to Mankato State and registered for the upcoming semester. Four years later, in 1981, I graduated summa cum laude, the highest level of honors, with a general studies degree, double majors in psychology and women’s studies, and minors in anthropology and library science. Welfare paid for the whole thing: classes, housing, living expenses. My brothers David and Mike had dropped out without graduating, and so, at the age of thirty-two, I became the first Jipson to earn a diploma from a four-year college. Twelve years later Jodi would become the second.
Chapter 11
Hide-and-Seek
After graduation I found out it takes more than a college degree to become a psychologist. To make ends meet, I took a job as a secretary for my friend Trudy’s husband, Brian. After a week, I told him, “Don’t waste any more money training me. I’m not going to stay.” I hated filing. I hated typing. After thirty-two years, I was tired of taking orders. For most of my adult life I had tried to be the person my guidance counselor predicted I’d be way back at Hartley High School. I had followed the path set out for me and just about every other woman of my generation. I didn’t want to do that anymore.
My sister, Val, who lived in Spencer, mentioned an opening at the local library. At that moment I had no intention of returning home. Despite my minor in library science, I had never really considered working in a library. But I took the interview, and I loved the people. A week later, I was on my way back to northwest Iowa, the new assistant director of the Spencer Public Library.
I wasn’t expecting to love the job. Like most people, I thought being a librarian meant stamping due dates in the back of books. But it was so much more. Within months, I was neck-deep in marketing campaigns and graphic design. I started a homebound program, which took books to people unable to visit the library, and developed a major initiative to interest teens in reading. I developed programs for nursing homes and schools; I started answering questions on the radio and speaking to social clubs and community organizations. I was a big-picture person, and I was beginning to see the difference a strong library made in a community. Then I got involved in the business side of running a library—the budgeting and long-range planning—and I was hooked. This was a job, I realized, I could love for the rest of my life.
In 1987, my friend and boss, Bonnie Pluemer, was promoted to a regional library management position. I spoke confidentially to several members of the library board and told them I wanted to be the new director. Unlike the rest of the applicants, who interviewed at the library, I interviewed secretly at a board member’s house. After all, a small town can turn quickly from nurturing nest to nettle bush when it looks like you’re getting too big for your britches.
Most of the members of the library board were fond of me but skeptical. They kept asking me, “Are you sure you can handle this job?”
“I’ve been assistant director for five years, so I know the position better than anyone. I know the staff. I know the community. I know the library’s problems. The last three directors have moved on to regional positions. Do you really want another person who views this job as a stepping-stone?”
“No, but do you really want the job?”
“You have no idea how much I want this job.”
Life is a journey. After all I’d been through, it was inconceivable this wasn’t my next step, or that I wasn’t the best person for the job. I was older than past directors. I had a daughter. I wasn’t going to take an opportunity lightly.
“This is my place,” I told the board. “There’s nowhere else I want be.”
The next day they offered me the position.
I wasn’t qualified. That’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. I was smart, experienced, and hardworking, but the job required a master’s degree in library science and I didn’t have one. The board was willing to overlook this fact as long as I started a master’s program within two years. That seemed more than fair, so I accepted the offer.
Then I found out the nearest American Library Association–accredited master’s program was five hours away in Iowa City. I was a single mother. I had a full-time job. That wasn’t going to work.
Today you can earn an accredited master’s degree in library science on the Internet. But in 1987 I couldn’t even find a long-distance learning program. And believe me, I looked. Finally, at the urging of my regional administrator, John Houlahan, Emporia State University in Emporia, Kansas, took the plunge. The first American Library Association-–accredited long-distance master’s program in the nation met in Sioux City, Iowa, in the fall of 1988. And I was the first student in the door.
I loved the classes. This wasn’t cataloging and checking out books. This was demographics; psychology; budgeting and business analysis; the methodology of information processing. We learned community relations. We spent twelve grueling weeks on community analysis, which is the art of figuring out what patrons want. On the surface, community analysis is easy. In Spencer, for instance, we didn’t carry books on snow skiing, but we always had the latest information on fishing and boating because the lakes were only twenty minutes away.
A good librarian, though, digs deeper. What does your community value? Where has it been? How and why has it changed? And most important, where is it going? A good librarian develops a filter in the back of her brain to catch and process information. Farm crisis in full swing? Don’t just stock up on résumé builders and career manuals; purchase books on engine repair and other cost-saving measures. Hospital hiring nurses? Update the medical manuals and partner with the local community college to help them utilize your resources. More women working outside the home? Start a second Story Hour in the evening and concentrate on day-care centers during the day.
The material was complex, the homework brutal. All the students were working librarians, and there were several other single mothers. This program wasn’t a casual decision; it was a last chance, and we were willing to work for it. In addition to attending class from five thirty on Friday to noon on Sunday—after a two-hour drive to Sioux City, no less—we were researching and writing two papers a week, sometimes more. I didn’t have a typewriter at home, much less a computer, so I would leave work at five, cook dinner for myself and Jodi, then head back to the library and work until midnight or later.
At the same time I threw myself into the library remodeling. I wanted to complete it by the summer of 1989, and I had months of work to do before we could even begin. I learned space planning, section organization, disability compliance. I chose colors, mapped furniture arrangements, and decided whether there was enough money for new tables and chairs (there wasn’t, so we refurbished the old ones). Jean Hollis Clark and I made exact scale models of the old library and the new library to display on the circulation desk. It wasn’t enough to plan a great remodel; the public had to be enthusiastic and informed. Dewey helped out by sleeping every day inside one of the models.