For 80-year-old Marilyn Parr of Crystal City, a temporary gig has stretched into a 40-year career.
Parr started working at the Crystal City Public Library in 1982 and recently celebrated her 40th anniversary on the job.
Tania Laughlin, library director since 1996, said even the modest anniversary reception made Parr a bit self-conscious.
“She’s very shy about publicity,” Laughlin said. “But she is the face of the library. Everybody knows her.”
Parr grew up in Crystal City and attended Sacred Heart Catholic School with her twin sister, Carolyn. Along with “about eight or 10” other local students, the sisters went to high school at Ursuline Academy in Kirkwood.
Parr was married shortly after high school and moved to Festus to raise her three children. Following a divorce in 1972, she returned to Crystal City, where she still lives in her original family home.
“I remember, of course, when this was a grocery store,” she said, referring to the library building’s previous incarnation as Dee Gees Market. “The library was in the old City Hall building, and came here in about 1974.”
Parr was a regular visitor to the library, and ended up being asked to work there. “Coletta Reecht was working here under Alberta Crowe, the head librarian,” she said. “Coletta asked me if I wanted to come and work alongside her, and I loved that idea.”
Parr said she worked weekday evenings and weekend days. “I was here six days a week, and people jokingly used to ask me if I lived here,” she said.
Her job was labor-intensive at first.
“When I started here, everything was paperwork,” she said. “We had an old Royal typewriter and every card for the card catalog had to be typed one at a time. I had to tally up the money every night.”
Parr also helped library patrons with research and school projects.
“We’d get people in here late on Saturday afternoon,” she said. “The kids wouldn’t tell the parents until that day that they had a big project due Monday morning. They’d be in here, needing help looking things up right up until closing time.”
No more shushing
When Mary Lou LaFloure took over as library director in the 1980s, Parr said the library took on something of a different tone.
“Whenever I went into a library as a kid, it was all dark and quiet and all you heard was ‘Sssshhhhh!’” she said. “That has definitely changed. Although, if people are doing something where they need quiet, we offer our meeting room.”
Parr said the library is a meeting place for people in the community.
“We have a lot of walk-ins, being across from the elementary school,” she said. “People come in to use the computers. We check out a lot of ebooks. We’re trying to get more of the younger people, and they come in and socialize. I think we do as much counseling as anything else.”
The COVID-19 pandemic curtailed activities for almost two years, but things are getting back to normal.
“We did curbside (checkout) for nearly a year,” Parr said. “People are back to coming inside now. The meeting room we have gets a lot of use under normal conditions.”
She said the room is used for anything from a lawyer taking a deposition to a family hosting a bridal shower.
Parr said the biggest changes she’s seen over the years are the result of computerization in 1998.
“PPG (Pittsburgh Plate Glass) bought us a TV and we put it up in here,” she said. “We’d have a lot of men who would come in and sit and watch the stock ticker that ran along the bottom of the screen. Once we got a computer, kids came and played games on it.”
The several cabinets full of index cards were slowly digitized, and the card catalog disappeared.
“We still have one of the cabinets,” Parr said. “It came from (local physician) Dr. Bogard’s practice. We use it for storage. We sold the others when we automated.”
But Parr said not everyone likes the changes. “Some people still aren’t comfortable looking things up on a computer,” she said. “They’ll ask, ‘What did you do with the cards?’ So we look it up for them.”
Parr herself is an enthusiastic consumer of technology, both at work and at home. “I like to listen to old radio shows on my tablet. I have an old radio that my parents bought in 1938 that doesn’t work. So I put a little Bluetooth speaker in there and it sounds like it’s coming from the radio,” she said.
Among her other duties, Parr checks books in and out, helps people with using the library computers and assists them with research. She delivers books to the homebound. She helps travelers and over-the-road truck drivers select and check out audio books. She works with Laughlin and the other three members of the library staff to get books and materials into the interlibrary lending program.
“She’s great,” Laughlin said. “Whatever I ask her to do, she does.”
No plans to retire
Parr said she is content with her role at the library.
“When Mary Lou left, they asked me about maybe taking her place,” she said. “But I wouldn’t be a good director. I don’t want to be in charge. I just like to work with people.”
She sees her mission as a sort of ambassador.
“It’s important for libraries to stay open, even with all this technology we have,” she said. “It’s good for people to have a place to come and read the paper, drink their coffee, relax, meet and interact with others. If you don’t have personal connections, so much is lost.”
She welcomes drop-in visitors, even without library cards.
“You’d be surprised how many of those we get,” she said. “Our computers were bought with a grant, and it stipulates that computer use be free to all, not just for cardholders.”
Parr works Wednesdays and Thursdays, about 20 hours a week.
She has had some recent health issues. She is affected by rheumatoid arthritis and wears a brace on one foot.
“I am looking at hip replacement surgery in the near future,” she said. “But I’ll do that and then get right back here afterward. I’m not going to just sit around in a chair.
“When I started here, it was originally supposed to be for a short time, and now I can’t imagine not being here.”