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10/19/2016 08:30 AMNo matter how many books line the shelves of your bookcase, no matter how many electronic volumes are on your tablet, no matter how many magazines are on your coffee table, it is a sure bet that George Sexton can produce bigger numbers.
That is because at the annual meeting of the Essex Library Association on Friday, Oct. 21 at 6 p.m., George will take over from Howard Tuttle as president of the library board.
So now for the numbers: The library shelves contain some 7,000 books (not counting those available on inter-library loan); it has access to 10,000 downloadable ebooks and more than 20 current magazines available at the library as well as 50 downloadable digital magazine subscriptions. An added bonus is some 2,500 DVDs. George’s own reading is likely to focus on the fiction shelves at the letter C.
“I like Tom Clancy,” he admits.
The annual meeting, to which all Essex residents are invited, features a speaker, Michael Pressman, a former producer for NBC’s Dateline and ABC’s 20/20. He will talk about a subject very much in public consciousness at the moment: how television covers presidential elections. Currently, the library’s community room features paintings by local artist Pam Carlson.
In Connecticut, libraries are funded in different ways. Some have all their costs covered by the town budget. Others, like the libraries in Essex and Ivoryton, have only a portion of their expenses underwritten by the local budget. The Town of Essex covers approximately half of the Essex Library Association’s annual budget.
“I don’t know how many people know that the Essex Library has to raise funds every year, “ George says. “It’s something we want people to be aware of and I want to emphasize.”
The annual meeting, nonetheless, is not a fundraising event, but a time for residents to learn about what is going on at the library, and vote on board officers and new trustees. According to Essex Library Director Richard Conroy, there is a great deal going on in the building, especially for a town the size of Essex. The door count shows that there were some 60,000 visits to the Essex Library last year; circulation totaled approximately 75,000 copies of books, magazines, and other library materials. There were 450 programs for children and adults attended by 12,000 people.
George would like to see that program attendance figure go even higher.
“The library does a great job with programs for adults and children, but I think there are people who don’t know about them and there are more people who could take advantage of them,” he says.
George, who grew up in Massachusetts, retired to Essex in 2001 from Fairfield County. He chose the town for its nautical tradition and his own love of sailing. He and his wife Dianne have a 39-foot sailboat, which is put to regular use in the good weather. His involvement in the sailing community goes beyond his own boat, however. He has served as commodore of the Essex Yacht Club, a position in which he says he used the management skills he’ll now use as president of the library board of trustees. George also serves on both the Planning & Zoning and Economic Development commissions in Essex.
Management skills are nothing new for George. For more than 30 years he was a marketing executive at Pepsi-Cola in Fairfield, where he was involved sponsorship campaigns that included placing the name Pepsi on the spinnaker of an America’s Cup yacht; promoting a discount program where buying a certain dollar amount of Pepsi products led to a discount on purchase of the movie E.T. when it came out in video; and sending a science experiment devised by young people aboard a NASA vehicle into space.
“It was a great career,” he says.
For George, the campaigns had varying personal results. He did meet Dennis Connor, the renowned yacht skipper who won four America’s Cup challenges. He also met Steven Spielberg, the co-producer and director of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, at Universal Studios.
“We were all in pinstriped suits and power ties and he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt,” George recalls.
As for the NASA experiment, at the last moment the flight it was supposed to go on was scrubbed for technical difficulties. The experiment, however, did get into space on a later launch.
The inevitable competition between Pepsi and Coke was something that all the marketing executives that George worked with took in stride.
“Pepsi and Coke? It was a lot of fun, exciting,” he says.
George’s loyalty to his former employers has not wavered in retirement. What soda does he drink? Well, Pepsi or Diet Pepsi, naturally.
Annual Meeting of the Essex Library
Friday, Oct. 21 at 6 p.m. at the library. Speaker Michael Pressman will present “How Television Covers Presidential Elections.” Refreshments will be served.