Day 75, Friday May 17, 2024: Glenwood, Minnesota to Minneapolis, Minnesota

Carnegie libraries visited: Sauk Center and Hutchinson, Minnesota

Sauk Centre is the home of Sinclair Lewis, of Main Street fame. The Main Street of the novel is set in the fictional Gopher Prairie, no doubt on the advice of Sinclair’s attorneys seeking to avoid a lawsuit. The book’s hero is Carol Milford, “a rebellious girl is the spirit of that bewildered empire called the American Middlewest,” who becomes a librarian (yea!) but leaves the profession because she finds it unrewarding (oh no!). When she marries and moves to Gopher Prairie, she is appalled by the town’s ugliness and smug provincialism. Her attempts to bring progressive change to the Prairie fail, as does her marriage, although after moving to Washington, D.C. she ultimately becomes a Gopher again and reunites with him. She remains defiant to the end: “I do not admit that Main Street is as beautiful as it should be!...I do not admit that dishwashing is enough to satisfy all women! I may not have fought the good fight, but I have kept the faith.”

Mark and Sinclair

Sauk Centre never became the thriving metropolis that the city’s leaders might have hoped for. From 1920 to 2020 its population grew from 2699 to 4555; not bad, and much better than many other midwest towns, if not exactly boomtown. It is not distinguished for nurturing women who have made history. Seventeen of its men have Wikipedia profiles. Two women do: Colleen Randall, an abstract artist, and Vi June, who became the first female mayor of Westminster, Colorado.

Sauk Center Carnegie Library and Museum

The Sauk Centre Carnegie library – like many other Carnegies – does not have its own Wikipedia profile, and I know that I could and should make one, and I’ll do so if I ever find the time…and the information. The Carnegie archives show that the town had a public library, supported by taxpayer funds, as early as 1879. By the time the town applied for a grant, the library had moved three times as it expanded, and “it was not [now?] located in part of the city hall, which is not convenient, being a little too far out.” No mention of the library’s organizers can be found.

Hutchinson Carnegie Library

The Hutchinson Carnegie is two-faced. One of its faces – the historic one – looks over a shaded park with a fountain in the middle. The flip side – the modern one – is above a plain concrete wall with peaked roof. Patrons mainly enter from this side, where the parking lot is located. 

Hutchinson Carnegie Library Main Entrance

Just inside the door a gray-haired man in jeans and pressed shirt quietly sits. He’s a master gardener in the library on Saturday mornings to answer your gardening questions. I climbed the half flight of steps leading to the historic part of the library, where I planned to work for the next couple of hours. When I sat down, I noticed eight framed portraits above the stairs. Each portrait was one of the library directors who had served since the library’s opening in 1904. I took a picture of the first two librarians:  Marjorie Wakefield, who served from 1902-1915, and Ella Adams, 1915-1930. Both are fine-featured, wear their hair pulled up and back, and are clothed in high neck blouses or dresses. The portrait on the far right is Katy, who has served as the library’s director since 2016 and, she says, will continue to serve as long as the library will have her.

Never have I had a library director greet me and my project so enthusiastically. Her personality was as bubbly as the fountain outside; her t-shirt read “Read books beyond the beaten path.” As a child, Katy loved to play librarian: she would draw book slips for her collection and then use them to check out books to herself. I asked her if she had any information about the librarians in the portraits, and she referred me to the Hutchison Historical Society. I walked back to my desk to begin my daily writing and over the next fifteen minutes Katy came to me three times with material that she had started digging up; she was into it. The third time led to a long (for me) conversation about libraries, book bans (the lead story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune that day was "Minnesota Poised to Outlaw Banning Books"), community support, the evolving purposes of libraries, and a range of other library-centric topics. 

Katy is a woman who loves her job. Unlike the pictures of Marjorie and Ella I mentioned above, she wore shoulder length brown hair, blue jeans and t-shirt, and copper colored glasses like the Bravo Browline glasses I get from Zennis. One reason that I’m not good at describing the appearance of librarians – people in general – is that their appearance is not that important to me. I’m more interested in what they say than how they look. 

I am interested in how people look at me, and whether or not they do. One of the profound experiences in my life involved two parties I attended after I first moved to Washington, D.C. in the early 1980s. One party was on Capitol Hill, where I worked as a congressional staffer, and the other one was in Georgetown, for reasons I don’t recall. At the Capitol Hill party, it seemed that the person I was talking with typically looked over my shoulder rather than directly at me. I knew (or imagined) what they were doing: scanning the room to see if there was anyone further up the food chain that they would rather be talking to. At the Georgetown party, people seemed to look me in the eyes, curious as to what I might have to say. That was the moment I knew that I didn’t want to spend my life in the world of political ambition. I’d rather spend it with the curious, rather than the climbers.

Looking back, I know that I merely exchanged one ambitious group for another. While the one involved those who were looking for power, the other was seeking those with smarts.

Here’s the list of those who have served as the directors of the Hutchison library, all women.

Marjorie Wakefield (1902-1915)

Ella Adams (1915-1930)

Sophie White (1930-38)

Mabel Schulte White (1938-1964)

Barbara Whittenberg (1964-1983)

Mary Henke (1983-2013)

Pamela Dille (2013-2016)

Katy Hiltner (2016-

The History of McLeod County, Minnesota, the county wherein Hutchison is located, was published in 1917. It contains nearly 400 pages profiling individuals who lived in the county up to the date of publication. No librarian could have compiled this book, as the profiles are in no discernible order. Flipping through them, I did not find a single entry heading for a woman. As far as I could ascertain, Marjorie Wakefield, who ran one of the most important institutions in the town, is never mentioned.