Checking out: Sherri Wood ends 36-year tenure as Lincoln's librarian

Ronald Reagan was President, no one had heard of the internet and deer were more of a traffic problem in Lincoln than cars, trucks or semis when Sherri Wood began her job as library director at the Lincoln Library.

"I started when my oldest boy was a baby. He turned 36 and I thought, 'What? I think I've been here a long time,'" Wood said, showing her deadpan sense of humor last Wednesday as her tenure drew at the library drew to a close.

More than 25 people (and a large inflatable rubber duck) showed up for Wood's retirement party or stopped in during the afternoon of June 13 to wish her well in retirement.

"Thirty-six years is an amazing milestone," Lewis & Clark Library Director John Finn told the crowd. "She has seen lots of changes and lots of progress. Sherri is responsible for a lot of that."

As librarian and branch manager, Wood oversaw several major changes to the library.

"It's been a miracle to me. When I first started here, it was just this little tiny room," Wood told the BVD as her party wound down. When she began, the shelves in the cramped building were overflowing with books, but over four years she led efforts to raise the money needed for an expansion.

In late 1988, the Lincoln Library broke ground on the 960-foot expansion that doubled the length of the original building.

About 20 years later, Wood lobbied for construction of a community meeting room. It was completed in 2010.

"She has worked for this library and did so many things, and every single thing she did was right," said Eleanor Pierce, who has been working with Wood for 23 years. "She wanted this meeting room so badly. I didn't get it, to be honest, but she was right."

Wood also worked to keep the library's technology up to date, as a way to support the community. In 1988, that meant a fax machine, a video library and microfiche. Today it's computers, the internet and e-books.

Despite advancements in technology and the various ways it now allows people to consume information, Wood said it hasn't really dampened their appetite for the printed page.

"People still like to take that book and hold it and flip those pages," Wood said. "We have not actually ever seen a decline in our checkout rates. We've just seen it spread around to more different things now."

Jesse Sallin, who filled in as librarian after Wood's predecessor, Ann Verdi, stepped down to start a ceramic shop, served as her substitute for several years. She particularly appreciates Wood's efforts to connect with kids, which include reading areas for younger kids, a separate area for teens and weekly presentations and craft workshops.

"Getting kids involved is good because they know the library is an OK place to come and read," Sallin said.

Over the years, Wood built a reputation for making the library a welcoming place and for knowing her patrons and their reading habits.

"I never run out of books. She knows what I like," said George Pierce, who retired as Lincoln Schools science teacher this year. "I don't have to come to the library sometimes; there will be four or five books at the house. She knows what kind of genres people like. You've got four or five authors you like and when they bring out a new book, she'd make sure she gets it in for you."

Pierce has known Wood since he began at the school 26 years ago. When he first arrived, and before his wife Eleanor moved up from Missoula, he gravitated to the library as a place to relax.

Pointing out a wing-backed chair across from the circulation desk, he said, "I'd fall asleep in that pink chair reading, and Sherri would wake me and send me home when the library closed."

Her friendship with one patron, however, earned her considerable, unwanted notoriety.

When the FBI arrested Ted Kaczynski in 1996 for the Unabom attacks, Wood's refusal to disparage Kaczynski made her the object of media curiosity. For Wood, it wasn't that she approved of what he did in any way, it was simply that the Ted she knew was a totally different person.

On one hand, she understands why people found that interesting.

"I used to yell at people like me on TV," she admitted, recalling her reaction to Jeffrey Dahmer's neighbors when he was arrested in 1991. "People were like 'oh we liked him, he was such a nice guy.' I'd be like 'oh you guys are idiots. He killed and ate people.' Then they arrested Ted and I'm sitting here going 'Oh, I liked him.'"

On the other hand, the situation left her with a lot of anger - at the media for their depiction of her and the town; at the FBI's undercover agents who came to the library and who tried to use her son as an asset; and at the people who made macabre pilgrimages to the library.

"I had a woman right after Ted got arrested, drove up out of California." Wood said. "She a was my first ever experience with people who would do that."

Wood said she wanted to touch walls Kaczynski may have touched, sit in chairs he sat in or touch books he read.

"One person brought his two sons from Canada to come into "Ted's Library.' I said it's not 'Ted's Library,' it's the Lincoln Community Library, it's everybody's library," she said. "I got to where I didn't like people coming in because they always asked weird, ugly questions and the media was always on me because I wouldn't degrade Ted."

In time she began liking people again, and despite Kaczynski's notoriety, he wasn't the only memorable person to visit.

"I had a patron come in, back when we still had the little library. She had on a Muumuu and go-go boots. It was like 20 below zero. She told me how she was engaged to this prince on this planet...and he was coming to get her. Because I was so nice to her, they could take me with them and I could marry one of his groomsmen or his stable boy or something. I said 'I happen to be very married. I just don't think I really want to go.'" Wood eventually gave the woman a winter coat and sometimes gave her rides to the Lincoln Lodge, where she was staying.

"She cracked me up," Wood said. "Then one day she just disappeared. I thought 'I wonder if they came and got her?'"

Looking ahead, Wood thinks the new librarian will bring in fresh ideas and energy.

"We need that," she said, adding that after 36 years, she's done everything she can think of.

She said if the person need her help, she'll be there "in a heartbeat, even if I'm still in my jammies." Otherwise plans to mostly steer clear to give her replacement the chance to find her or his own space.

"I don't want her or him to feel like I'm checking up on them or making sure they're keeping up 'my' library," she said.

Plus, Wood's retirement plans should keep her busy. She'll be helping Diane Ironi at the Senior Center, and plans to join the Arts Council, get involved with Envision Lincoln and start a Friends of the Library group.

"I think she's gonna be working a little harder than she planned on after retirement,' said her husband Bob, who admitted he'd probably just go fishing.

Wood said there's a reason she waited so long to retire and plans on staying active.

"So many people retire, they sit on the couch and then they die. I thought 'I don't want to die,'" she said. "I want to stay around long enough to hear my kids whispering, 'do you think she will ever die?'"

So, about all those ducks ... "One day we got an order of ducks that said Lewis and Clark Library. I fell in love with it, so I put one on my computer. Then someone bought me a little duck that looked like a mumy. I though oh that's cute, I'll put it on my computer," Wood explained. "The next thing I know people are bringing me tons of ducks. One day I said to some people 'I'm so done with ducks' and I came out from the back work room and here was a mother duck with baby ducklings on it's back. I said 'I guess I'm not done with ducks!'"