It was the seventies, a tough time for a college graduate with a philosophy degree, from a large French-Irish immigrant family of limited means, newly married to a Vietnam veteran from the South with an art degree. High inflation and gas prices, no good jobs, Watergate, widespread social unrest and protests that were promising but didn’t seem to achieve anything.

We’d moved from the big cities I was more accustomed to living in, to his small home community in the western North Carolina mountains. Affordable, it took some getting used to.

I had a good education, but the only job I could find was as a shelver in the town’s busy public library. It had a reputation for excellent public service. The head librarian, retired from the Army, having served in libraries on military bases all over the world, said she’d take a chance on me. Maybe I could eventually start in-house training to be a reference librarian. Ever the ready study, I became well acquainted with nearly all the library’s resources in short order.

But I struggled to understand the mountain English of the local people, always delivered in quick, soft cadences. As I tried harder to catch their words, their speech pattern would get faster and softer. It took me a long time to assist people to find what they needed.

Pretty soon, Mrs. Marshall intervened.

She said to the young woman with several very young children in tow whom I was trying to help: “Mrs. Potts, Theresa is a new librarian. She’s well trained. We think she is going to be a very good librarian as she works here and learns more. But she’s half-French and her English is not very good. Maybe you and I could help her?”

Briefly confused, I listened to how Mrs. Marshall asked Mrs. Potts about how her day was going. And then she asked her short questions. Gradually I came to pick-up how I should ask questions to be of service. And Mrs. Potts did her best to help me understand. Not only that, but Mrs. Potts spread the word that I did a good job but needed help. Some even asked for “the young lady who was half-French.” People approached me with the attitude that they would help me to help them. I did the same, in turn.

Mrs. Marshall forever changed me for the better at a time in my life when I really needed to learn her many-sided lesson. She inspired me to go on to graduate study and a career working in libraries, finally retiring after years of teaching library and information science at university. Hers is the first lesson I’ve always taught.—Theresa Pepin