Miss Dorothy Keefe, the daughter of
Mr. and Mrs. Maurice Keefe, began working at the Sandusky Library in 1915. She
was a graduate of Sandusky High School, and attended college at Chautauqua, New
York and Western Reserve college in Cleveland, Ohio. She was also an
outstanding musician, having studied with Professor N.E. Fox. For several years
she was in charge of the library’s outreach services to various sections of
Erie County. In November of 1922, she was named Librarian of the
Sandusky Library. An article which appeared in the February 18, 1928 issue of
the Sandusky Star Journal featured
the headline “Librarian is efficient in various lines.”
Miss Keefe often spoke to community
groups. She was an active member of the Harlequins, a local theatrical
organization. When a musical revue was presented in 1937, for the benefit of
Providence Hospital, she performed a dance solo entitled “Sea
Gardens” and appeared in the number
“Castilian Castanet Dance.”
In 1938 Miss
Keefe took a five month world cruise aboard a British freighter. She traveled
to the innermost parts of China, India and Africa, and took a camel caravan
across the African desert. Though at times the food was terrible, and she
became sick after having been bitten by fleas, Dorothy told the local Rotary
Club that “she wouldn’t take a thousand dollars for her experiences, nor would
she go through the same experience again for ten times that amount.” She became known as Sandusky’s “globe
trotting librarian.”
In the Spring of 1939, Dorothy Keefe announced that she
would be resigning as chief Librarian of the Sandusky Library, in order to move
to England. Miss Mary McCann took over as Librarian of the Sandusky Library in
September, 1939, a post she held until 1976. Miss Keefe married Frank
Gordon, an engineer for a British freighter line, in November of 1939. At
the time of her brother’s death in 1961, Mrs. Frank Gordon was residing in New
York. Dorothy Gordon passed away in Florida in 1980.
Here is a picture of
the staff of the Sandusky Library from the 1930s; Dorothy Keefe is the second
person on the left:
No comments:
Post a Comment