Obituaries

Helen M. Abig, 81, librarian at Newark (N.J.) Public Library from 1947 until her retirement in 1962, died March 26.

Mildred E. Lake Agor, 91, children's librarian at the Ellenville (N.Y.) Public Library from 1959 until her retirement in 1977, died March 31.

Dennis Bruce, 67, died February 22 after a long battle with Parkinson's disease.  He headed Spartanburg County (S.C.) Public Libraries for 25 years and oversaw the opening of six branches throughout the county until his retirement in 2000.

Carlyne McCallister, 84, died on March 2. McCallister was a special services librarian in the U.S. Army during the Korean Conflict and later served as a faculty librarian at what is now Millard Library at Portland State University in Oregon. In 1979, she joined the librarian faculty at Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research and became the first woman ever invited to speak professionally at a conference in an Arab country.

Patricia Berger, 84, 1989-90 ALA president, died March 27 from complications following a fall.  Pat received the Federal and Armed Forces Libraries Round Table Achievement Award in 1984-85, recognizing promotion of library and information service and the information profession in the federal community. As ALA president, she appointed the committee that drafted ALA's Preservation Policy. In 1992, she was elected to the Board of the Freedom to Read Foundation.   

Frank McGowan, 79, died March 8 due to respiratory failure.  McGowan served as director of acquisitions and overseas operations for the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. until his retirement in 1982.

Genevieve Neu, 81, who served as a librarian for a number of years at Southern Tier Library System in Corning, New York, and later director of Cohocton (N.Y.) Public Library, died March 17.

Julia Allen, 64, director of the Carnegie Free Library in Connellsville, Pennsylvania, since the early 1970s, died March 6 after an extended illness.

Elizabeth Meehan-Black, 62, head of order management and assistant head of the monographic services department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library, died March 2 after a battle with cancer. Meehan-Black joined the library staff in 1986 as head of bibliographic searching and held a number of management positions at the library.