Letters to the Editor
A Goodbye to Irene By Barbara Friedman Consulting librarian Westminster

Irene Mattila was a woman of words. She started her career as a news reporter at a time when women were rarities in the newsroom. She became a librarian at the Forbush Library in the seventies cataloging books when cataloging was still an art and an intellectual exercise performed even in small libraries. Building a card catalog was a laborious task. Not only did she create the catalog for nearly 25 years, she even "hustled" a bigger catalog when the original one ran out of drawers.

Irene was instrumental in securing the philanthropic donation of Vaito Eloranta. Today, a room named in his honor functions as museum and meeting room in the library. Although she retired before the renovation of the library was complete, her contributions helped to build it.

She was also part of a three women team (Dusty, Musty, and Rusty) who dusted and rearranged the historical artifacts in the museum. They wrote plays and presented talks to students about Westminster's rich history. I'm not sure which name belongs to whom, but the others on her team were Rita Daley and Joan Keena.

Irene did face one challenge near the end of her career at the Forbush, which was the advent of computers. Upon her retirement, she put her writing talents to work and expressed the feelings of many who were born in the twenties and had to learn how to use a computer in the nineties. Here is her verse.
Irene's Swan Song
February 1995
For 24 years I labored in peace
Totally oblivious to computerese
Unrelenting, technology moved in
Scaring the hell out of this Finn
My good colleagues, one by one
Understood right away what could be done
Achieved their goals straight away
No effort at all, come what may!
A language developed, foreign to me
How could I cope with technology?
"Bytes" and "disks," "soft" and "hard" ware
Too "young" to retire, with years to spare
I decided to weather it out
Learn what I could, still in doubt
all the time observing those gals
and their computers, becoming pals
On certain shifts, assigned to "backup"
the computer would invariably act up
No way would it accept my demands
The boss, by phone, gave me the commands
With patience and tact, she read me through
correcting my mistakes on the "menu"
On some occasions it worked out right
I left the LIBRARY in great delight
So home I go to my '46 Smith-Corona
Wondering what's lacking in my persona
Knowing full well it is time to surrender
To a smarter generation of my gender
PS-My husband wants to buy a computer
Thinks we can learn from the tutor
Writing letters and keeping statistics
Back to Square One - Let's get realistic!