Prose Exercise #6 - Cornell University Librarian

The photo is of Stephen A. McCarthy, University Librarian of Cornell University from 1946-1968.

Yesterday's post referenced a physics experiment done aboard Apollo 15. My sister speculated that I was writing about our father. I had no memory of him having anything to do with the Apollo missions. She vividly remembers that my father had something to do with the return of Apollo 13 and she had an autographed picture of the crew that she proudly took to show-and-tell classes as proof. In 1970, I was 18 and completely self-absorbed, what was going on with my parents was of no interest to me whatsoever. However my brother doesn't remember anything about it either. And we can't ask my father.

So maybe I'm writing about my father so let's go with it. In my search of the random photographs, I came across a picture of Ezra Cornell, who made a fortune from the Western Union telegraph company and founded Cornell University. Which my father attended, he studied engineering. This librarian was there in the late 40s, when my father was there. In fact this librarian, who sounds like he did a tremendous job consolidating the various Cornell libraries into a legitimate university research library, served until 1968 until it was almost time for me to go to college (in 1970). When he left Cornell, he because Executive Director of the Association of Research Libraries.