By: Barry Ernest
The year is 1967.
Lyndon B. Johnson is president. Green Bay wins Super Bowl I. Three astronauts die in a launch-pad fire. Expo 67 opens in Montreal. The 25th Amendment is ratified. Big Macs make the scene. The “enemy is losing” in Vietnam, we’re told. The Public Broadcasting Act is signed. Human Be-Ins dot the landscape. Live satellite TV begins. Roger Ebert debuts as a film critic.
Two-year-old Catie Bond, hand-in-hand with her mom, enters the public library on Walnut Street in downtown Harrisburg. It is her first ever visit to such a place.
“I remember the library was where my sister and I could get our hands on books and come for various children’s programs,” says Catie today. “The downtown library was the only one open in Harrisburg at that time.”
Two other significant yet related events occurred in that same year.
On a national level, the Office of Intellectual Freedom was created as an outgrowth of the American Library Association. The office was charged with educating librarians, their staff, and the public about the merits of being able to seek knowledge and ideas without restriction. On the local scene, the downtown library, a solo staple since 1914, expanded with three new branches: Harrisburg Uptown, Kline Village, and Colonial Park.
Both of those actions will have an impact on Catie’s mom… and eventually on Catie herself.
“Our family started to go to the Colonial Park Library after it opened in 1967,” Catie recalls. “Mom liked that someone could get groceries at the plaza as well as library books at the library.”
That was when the Colonial Park Library and the mall had rubber mats for a floor, which Catie’s mom felt reasonable since kids wouldn’t be hurt if they fell.
Catie became the proud holder of her very own library card. She routinely searched through those large metal card-catalogue cabinets to find Trixie Beldon, the Bobbsey Twins, and many other volumes.
She tells the story that only a few years after introducing Catie to the joys of reading, her mom would become a circulation assistant at the Harrisburg Uptown Library and the Kline Village branch.
But that’s not all.
“My paternal grandmother, Eleanor Smith, studied library science at Carnegie Tech and got her degree,” Catie said. “She moved to New York City and worked for the New York City Public Library in the late 1920s and the early 1930s.” In 1931, Eleanor married Julian Bond, who also studied at Carnegie Tech, earning a degree in engineering. The couple then moved to Yorktown Heights, NY, where Eleanor worked for the John C. Hart Library.
That was where they became familiar with the name Halsey William Wilson. For those unfamiliar, Wilson was a noted publisher from Croton Heights, NY, and the creator of such reference essentials as the Readers’ Guide, the Cumulative Book Index, and the Book Review Digest. He was once labeled as one of the 100 most important leaders of the 20th century. He also had the unusual but charitable habit of giving parcels of land to librarians for free.
“My grandparents built a garage on the land they were given and lived in it while they built a house,” Catie explained. Her grandfather, Julian, was an architect and thus designed their future home.
Catie’s library lineage doesn’t stop there.
“My great aunt, Virginia Keltz, who was Eleanor’s sister, was also a librarian in Detroit,” Catie added. “My maternal great aunt, Betty Donnelly, was a librarian in Newcastle on the Tyne in England. And my uncle, Brian Bond, worked as a children’s librarian in North Bend, Oregon.”
You might say a taste for books and the places where they are archived was a major part of the family’s DNA. This is why it was only natural that Catie, who became Catie Sutherland upon marriage, went to work at the East Shore Area Library, its newly acquired name, after relocating in 1977 to its current home on property adjacent to the Colonial Park Plaza.
She’s been there for 31 years.
“I started working for the library in February 1994,” she said. “I worked as a ‘page’ where I put books away and shelved books.” Three decades later, she now holds the position of Public Services Assistant. As the title suggests, she is a go-to guide for all-things library. She is a source of assistance to those who work at the library, as well as the many who visit it daily.
Catie doesn’t talk much about her heritage. In fact, few are aware of her family line and its long-standing connection to various libraries. When you ask Catie what the library means to her, you get a humble response.
“I provide service and help our members get answers to their questions and generally help people out.”
More than that, the library has presented her with a means of following in the footsteps forged by her ancestors. Toward that end, it has become a way of encouraging others to seek knowledge and ideas without restriction. It has afforded Catie the opportunity to deal personally with those who, just as her mom once did, take their children by the hand and lead them, often for the very first time, into their public library.
