Obituaries
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Esther Dombrowski, 81, a retired librarian who worked for Bel Air (Md.) High School for 31 years, died October 8 of pneumonia.
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Lois Smith, 84, former celebrity publicist and trustee for Newbury Town Library in Byfield, Massachusetts, died October 7 from a brain hemorrhage. She had recently been working to launch a new library Friends group and had a long-term goal of creating an endowment for steady funding.
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Beth Howse, 69, a longtime special collection librarian for Fisk University in Nashville, died September 26. For more than 20 years she served as director of Fisk’s Mini College, a summer program designed to broaden the academic and cultural experiences of children within a college setting.
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Judy Katzung, 74, former librarian for US News & World Report magazine, died September 21. She served as a teacher and librarian in the South St. Paul schools before becoming chief librarian for St. Paul Dispatch–Pioneer Press. She left Minnesota in 1987 and became supervising librarian for US News & World Report in Washington, D.C., where she remained until her retirement in 2003.
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Clara Stanton Jones, 99, first woman and African-American director of Detroit Public Library, died September 30. In 1972 she established the Information Place, a community referral system that became a model for other libraries throughout the country. She served as director of the library for 26 years until her retirement in 1978.
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Armando E. Gonzalez, 91, a retired law specialist at the Library of Congress’s Law Library, died August 13 of heart ailments. He served as director of the Hispanic law library at Columbia University in New York City before joining the Library of Congress in 1967. He was assistant director of the Hispanic law section until his retirement in 1991.
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Yvette Robison, 59, former manager for North Sarasota (Fla.) Library, died September 23 after a 14-year battle with breast cancer.
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June Smeck Smith, 95, former librarian and teacher, died July 8. She served as the reader’s advisory librarian at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota, and taught at its library science department. She was chair from 1962 to her retirement, in 1975.
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Jay Lucker, 82, former director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries in Cambridge, died September 2. While at MIT, he oversaw the renovation and expansion of the Rotch Library of Architecture and Planning. He served as a nationally renowned library building and planning consultant to numerous libraries, universities, and museums, and continued to consult after his retirement in 1995.
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Emily Muller, 93, died September 2. She served as librarian for the Westport (Conn.) Public Library.
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Mercedes Leighton, 90, former Wilkes-Barre (Pa.) city controller, died August 17. Leighton served as manager for the Osterhout Free Library in Wilkes-Barre. She was elected city controller in 1979 and won four consecutive terms, for a total of 21-and-a-half years in office.
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Elsie Viktoria Anna Von Raison Thomas, 91, died on July 22. She served as library specialist for the Donald Love Memorial Library and C. Y. Thompson Library at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.