05/11/2021
A boy, the librarian and the storyteller: Tom Hallman at large
Posted May 09, 2021
Here is an excellent story about Lincoln by a superb writer Tom Hallman. Thank You Tom!
Lincoln High School's building and football field is seen from the air.
Lincoln High School, as seen from the air in 2012. In the 1970s, the school library was a welcome retreat for at least one bashful student.
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By Tom Hallman Jr. | The Oregonian/OregonLive
I carried the mail into my house and found, tucked in among the bills, the alumni magazine for Portland’s Lincoln High School. It made no sense to me. I attended Lincoln for only two years before my parents transferred me to Jackson High School, where I graduated in 1973.
As a kid, I went to many schools because my parents thought I wasn’t “motivated” enough. Perhaps they were correct. I was, after all, the student who received a “C” in English, a “D” in band and brought home notes from teachers informing my parents I did only the minimal amount of work to get by.
Between first grade and my senior year in high school, I went to five schools. That meant I was the “new kid.” I had red hair and a tendency to blush. I wasn’t on the A-list when it came to being popular. The easiest way to explain this is to tell you that when I was a sophomore at Lincoln, my photo ran in the freshman section of the yearbook.
And here I receive an alumni magazine from Lincoln High School.
I flipped through the pages to see if, by chance, I recognized any familiar names. On Page 16, I saw a photo of myself. I’d been selected for the Lincoln High School hall of honor, made up of alumni who’ve made noteworthy contributions to society.
I scanned the list of past winners, which included a governor, an astronaut and a vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.
The magazine said I was selected because of my successful career as a writer. I’ve won many feature writing prizes in journalism, including the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. I’ve written four books and spent 40 years as a reporter at The Oregonian.
I closed the magazine, thinking about how far I’d come from those high school days.
And I thought back to an incident at Lincoln with a librarian that changed my life. It serves as a reminder that students don’t always learn the most valuable lessons in a classroom.
It was this woman — more than any high school teacher — who showed me the difference between knowledge and wisdom, and which of the two is more important.
Not being popular or athletic, I hung out in the Lincoln library, a socially safe place for misfits. My grades did not reflect it, but I was curious, and always learning through books. I constantly checked out books, reading about any topic that interested me — model rockets, architecture and history.
I also ran up library fines, which I failed to pay. Eventually, I was banned from checking out books, a problem as I was reading three books a week.
My solution was to sneak them out of the library. All was well until one day I was called from class and told to report to the vice principal’s office, where I found Lincoln’s head librarian. An assistant of hers somehow figured out I’d been taking books, and she’d reported me to the school official in charge of discipline.
I confessed.
The librarian and the vice principal took me to my locker and made me open it. Inside were at least 10 books. None of them had been checked out. Back we went to the office. The vice principal told me to take a seat. He wanted to call my parents, make an issue out of it and possibly suspend me.
And then. ...
The librarian stopped him. She told the vice principal I could come work with her in the library. She’d give me a job putting away books and stacking things. The vice principal was dubious. Rules were to be followed and consequences administered. No. He shook his head, picked up the phone and began dialing.
Wait, she said quietly. This will work. Trust me. He set the handset back in the phone’s cradle and gave her a look, telling her without words that I was now her responsibility.
I started the next day. Never a word about it was spoken between me and the librarian. My parents never learned the truth. I had worked off my fines by the end of the school year. I never returned to the library, never saw the librarian again, because my parents sent me to another high school in the fall.
Yearkbook
A time capsule from another era.
Now, at age 65, I know that librarian understood me in ways I did not. I was a regular in her world. She saw a floundering kid meandering the best he could on his journey through high school life. She offered me humanity, a simple act of kindness and understanding.
The photo of me as a sophomore in the Lincoln High School yearbook shows me, unaware that I was being watched, in the library, reading one of my beloved books and lost in thought.
After reading the alumni magazine tribute one last time I realized two things: I’d never thanked the librarian for what she did, and I’d forgotten her name.
I went to the basement and dug through boxes until I found my old yearbook. I turned the pages until I saw her photo.
Helen Keyser.
I know who really belongs in that high school hall of honor.
-- Tom Hallman Jr; [email protected]; 503-221-8224; Tom Hallman
