These are the heartfelt words Joe Burke, director of the Altamont Free Library, spoke at a ceremony on Friday, June 30, dedicating the library’s new Community Patio to Dick and Ellen Howie.
 
As we all know, I have the best job. You might have a pretty great job, but I’ve got the best one and today is one of the best parts of that best job, because today I get to help inaugurate a permanent tribute to two of my favorite people and to let them know just how admired, and respected, and loved they are, and to thank them for their hard work on behalf of the community that they so love in return.

When the idea was raised of naming the patio after Dick and Ellen, I told our trustees to be careful, because we’re a small library and we only have so many things to name after people so, if we decide to name the new patio after Dick and Ellen, we can’t decide a few years later to make it the Tracy Mayer or Jeff Perlee Community Patio. They were undeterred as I hoped they would be by my warning and the motion was carried by acclamation. I applaud their selflessness.

The reason that the board was so enthusiastic in their decision was that they know — and you all know too that few libraries have ever been so fortunate to have such friends as Dick and Ellen. I think that Judith [Wein] would agree with me that getting to be Dick and Ellen’s librarian has been one of the great privileges of our working lives.

It is literally my job to talk about books and ideas with Ellen Howie on a pretty regular basis. That’s one of the things that I get paid for. Can you imagine? How is that an actual job?  

Today is a day for superlatives and for going over the top in some respects in our praise of Dick and Ellen, and that is distinctly not Ellen’s style nor was it Dick’s. I know that Ellen is uncomfortable with the attention that we are lavishing on her, but that’s just too bad. 

They do not seek credit or undue recognition. Their goal over their many years of hard work for their community was not to have things named after them. Their goal was to help their neighbors and to make their little piece of the world a better, kinder, and more humane place.

In addition to being parents and grandparents, friends and neighbors, between them, Ellen and Dick have been nurses, firefighters, members of the armed forces, church leaders, sponsors to recovering addicts, non-profit founders, newsletter editors, caregivers, retreat leaders, consistory members, and much more besides.

In just our organization, they have been painters, carpenters, book sellers, chicken barbecuers, and trustees, as well as being the greatest and most enthusiastic cheerleaders that any library ever had. They have served on every committee, attended every potluck, been the heart and soul of every book group, having read every page of every book.

At least Ellen did. Sometimes Dick would throw one of my book choices across the room. But that’s OK. Dick spent the evening of his last birthday on Earth wrestling with Zoom so that he could attend a meeting of the Altamont Free Library Board of Trustees and no meeting of the board was complete until he made the motion to adjourn.

They show up. And when they show up they are prepared and engaged and thoughtful and ready to do whatever needs to be done, as long as their work will in some way make their community a little better in a modest way.

When we invited you all here, I asked you to please bring a rock to add to the ring of stones around this patio. The reason I did that was because a few months ago, we were in a meeting of the Slow Reads Book Club whose members are well represented here today. Slow Reads is really just an excuse for a lot of us to get some time to talk with Ellen every week.

This particular meeting, we were discussing the book “Enchantment” by Katherine May, which is a little uneven but I think we all agree that the good parts are truly wonderful. Anyhow, we were talking on this Zoom meeting about finding beauty and enchantment in small everyday things.

One of us mentioned a rock they’d found that had a lovely streak of orange in it, and which they had close at hand. The next person to speak brought up a rock that looked very pleasingly like a potato and which they also happened to have right within arm’s reach. The third person reached across their desk and grabbed a rock they’d found in a significant location and slipped into their pocket.

Nearly every one of us had the same experience of stopping in our busy lives to find small, almost unnoticeable beauties and wonderments in the world around us. It’s so important to do that, as Ellen constantly reminds us.

The rocks were here long before us and will be here long after us. They remind us — and Ellen constantly reminds us — that our time here is short, but in the time that we have here we are called to assist in the stewardship and preservation of important things. To find beauty and meaning in the world around us and to try and help others do the same.

Adding your rocks to the patio will be a small contribution to a larger project that individually changes little but in the aggregate creates a coherent and beautiful whole. Those small acts make a difference, and to paraphrase Margaret Mead, they’re really the only things that do.

Small daily kindnesses and acts of selflessness where each one changes little, but enough of them make cohesive and vibrant communities. My hope is that, by naming this patio after them, we will be able to hold onto the example that Dick and Ellen have set of stewardship, and volunteerism, and community-heartedness for generations to come.

So because of their kindness and generosity of spirit, because of their selfless dedication the many communities to which they belong, because of all of the wood stripping, and staining, because of all of the chickens they barbecued, because of all of their nursing and caregiving, because of all of the meetings of various types they’ve attended and because of all of the good that has flowed from those meetings, and because we love them both so much, on behalf of the Altamont Free Library Board of Trustees, it is my distinct honor to name this the Dick and Ellen Howie Community Patio.