Cool article from School Library Journal about the influence of librarians on the life of the late U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings.
Mr. Louis W. Caccesse, the first Library Director of Camden County College in Blackwood, N.J. was one of my mentors as a teenager.
My mom was the purchasing secretary there, and he encouraged my reading and research. He would always give fair consideration to suggestions to order books that my mom and I \read about in The New York Times Book Review. I fondly remember watching the U.S. Senate Watergate hearings on a TV in the Library staff lounge and talking about it with the librarians. He wrote one of nine letters of recommendation filed with Georgetown University, whose interviewer told me in 1973, "We've never heard of your high school."
My high school librarian, Ms. Gould, kicked out of the high school library for six (6) days in 1974 or talking (about impeachment and Watergate, natch).
Thank you, Mr. Caccese!
I forgive you, Ms. Gould.
From School Library Journal:
"The People Who Helped Me the Most Were the Librarians" — Rep. Elijah Cummings
Congressman Elijah Cummings, in this brief clip, recalls the time he spent as a child at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore.
"The people who helped me the most were the librarians," Cummings told Steve Kroft in a 60 Minutes interview broadcast in January of this year, adding that the public library was the only integrated institution in his neighborhood.
Speaking about the librarians, whom he credited with staying past their regular working hours to help him with his schoolwork, enabling him to get out of special ed, the longtime Baltimore congressman, who was also chair of the House Oversight Committee, got emotional.
"There are a lot of good people who really care," he said.
The complete interview with Cummings, who died Thursday, is available from CBS News.
