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08/23/2017 08:30 AMShe grew up reading at the Blackstone Library, got her first job there, and within those marbled walls was inspired to pursue her master’s degree and become a children’s librarian. Heck, Phyllis DaCorte even made a point of seeking out the beloved Branford building’s smaller twin, the Timothy B. Blackstone Memorial Library in Chicago, as a highlight of a recent summer vacation.
As a librarian, Phyllis’s career took her other libraries in other towns including Southbury, then back to Branford at Sliney School, and finally on to Old Saybrook, where Phyllis served as Acton Public Library’s children’s librarian for 15 years and also assistant library director. Phyllis retired from Acton in 2015 and is now giving back to her shoreline home by volunteering to read to kids, and sharing with them everything she can learn from the books she loves.
In fact, a year before she retired, the Branford native got back to basics, signing on as a summer story time reading volunteer with Stony Creek’s Willoughby Wallace Library, which she continued to do this summer. About two years ago, Phyllis also landed a volunteer gig in her new hometown of East Haven with the Shoreline Trolley Museum’s Tuesday Trolley Reading Program in July and August.
The Branford High School Class of ‘68 alumnae, née Ceccolini, lived with her family on Main Street until the age of about six, when her parents built a home on Palmer Woods Circle near the library building. Phyllis’s dad was a Branford volunteer fireman who became deputy fire marshal under former chief Jack Tweed. Growing up, Phyllis attended Harrison Avenue School and Laurel Street School and was a little library fan who could walk herself to the stacks anytime her heart desired.
“I don’t even remember how old I was when I first went into the Blackstone,” says Phyllis. “All I remember was at that time, you had to be seven to get your own library card, and I remember doing that.”
Right out of college, with a degree in English, “I got my start at the Blackstone,” says Phyllis. “I was in the Children’s Department with my brother, who’s 12 years younger than I am. So I was waiting for him and talking to the children’s librarian, Vivian Norman—what a terrific person. She’d asked if I was looking for a job and said something might come up. Sure enough, that fall, a part-time position came up...I took it, and I found out I really liked working in the children’s library.”
By the following spring, Phyllis was working full-time in the Children’s Department. Within a few years, she decided to pursue her master’s in library science from Southern Connecticut State University, and became certified as a school media specialist. She worked at the Blackstone for 10 years while taking courses, mostly one at a time, to complete her master’s degree.
Phyllis took her first titled children’s librarian job in Southbury and then was at Sliney during the 1990s. She says she really enjoyed exploring areas she thought would interest Branford elementary students, such as teaching kids how to read a map and pinpoint Branford locations, then following the exploits of the legendary Leatherman across a map of Connecticut while also sharing his story and its ties to Branford’s history.
By then, Phyllis and her husband, Bob, who had lived for a short time in Meriden, had their own home in Branford and were raising their son, Matthew, here. While being at Sliney made perfect sense for this working mom, something was missing in her work, Phyllis says.
“The school was K-4, but I missed the little guys, the preschoolers. They are characters,” says Phyllis.
Soon enough, opportunity came knocking.
“I just happened to notice [an opening with] Acton Public Library in Old Saybrook, applied for the position and got it,” she says.
As someone who helped libraries evolve from the print era to the computer and digital age, Phyllis says there’s more need than ever for these valuable public spaces.
“I’d say they’ve become more of a place where you can find cultural arts connections and certainly many different programs. People and organizations are using meeting rooms all the time. It’s a big part of any community,” she says.
Phyllis keeps her children’s librarian skills sharp with her volunteer work—and that entails quite a bit more than just her engaging reading style and ability to share those compelling picture panels that kids love to explore in each book. She hand-picks each book, often bringing along a project she’s crafted (she has an associate’s degree in commercial art) to tie-in to the story’s subject matter. While the possibilities are endless at the library, it takes Phyllis’s practiced eye to help focus kids on books relevant to a visit to the Shoreline Trolley Museum.
“Finding trolley stories is difficult—there’s not that much out in picture books,” says Phyllis. “So what I’ve been doing is looking at what we see on the trolley ride, like all the different birds or even what the weather’s doing. Then, there are almost too many books to choose from!”
As someone who loves to investigate things that catch her interest, Phyllis is now working on the possibility of a new program with Shoreline Trolley Museum that might somehow tie in to the Stony Creek-to-Pine Orchard Trolley Trail, part of the Branford Land Trust.
“I had just had a meeting with the president of the Shoreline Trolley Museum...We were talking about different programs, and he was saying it would be nice if we could link in with the Stony Creek Trolley Trail. And that just piqued my curiosity,” says Phyllis, who stopped in at the Stony Creek Museum, currently showing its local history exhibit, The End of the Line: Stony Creek Trolleys.
“I was looking at a map, seeing where the Stony Creek track was...and here we go again, I’m getting all wrapped up,” says Phyllis, who next plans to help the trolley museum reach out to link up.
“The wheels are rolling!” she says.