Longtime librarian to retire

Sandra Johnson has been the librarian at the Hightstown library since August 1981. Her last day there will be Oct. 1 of this year.

By: Scott Morgan
   HIGHTSTOWN — Since Aug. 8, 1981, the Hightstown Memorial Branch of the Mercer County Library has seen two coats of paint, three computer upgrades and four new walls.
   But only one Sandra Johnson.
   All that, however, will change Oct. 1, when Ms. Johnson exits the building as a full-time librarian for the last time.
   "I’m looking forward to retiring, but it doesn’t seem totally real," Ms. Johnson says.
   Ms. Johnson, who is "not 65!" says it is simply time to move on.
   "I love the library and I love Hightstown," she said, "but there are other things I want to do with the next 50 years of my life."
   Born in Trenton, raised in Kingston and Princeton, and educated (in French) at Rutgers University’s Douglass College, Sandra Johnson is a woman of many hats. She is builder, writer, cook and advocate.
   "We certainly will miss her," said co-worker Robert Passalacqua. "She’s always been very concerned about the library."
   Concern and hard work are two major components of Ms. Johnson’s character. As a college junior, with the real world only a year away, Ms. Johnson realized she didn’t see herself as a French teacher as every other member of her class did. It was the ’60s, and there was a better world to be had, so she decided to spend summer in France with the American Friends Service Committee.
   But the trip was no vacation. Ms. Johnson spent her junior summer painting, cleaning and otherwise mending houses in the rural slums of Bordeaux. And enjoying every minute of it.
   "Physical work is the best," she said. "I love that kind of thing. Working together is the best way to get to know someone."
   Back in the states and fresh from college, Ms. Johnson said she was first bitten by the library bug after working in Princeton University’s Firestone Library as a bibliographic assistant. Her job there was mainly to keep track of titles ordered by the university’s professors, making sure books were not reordered by every new professor who came along.
   Before long, academia beckoned again. And so did New York City. So Ms. Johnson lined up a position at Columbia University’s Avery Library to put herself through graduate study at the New School for Social Research.
   Halfway through graduate school, Ms. Johnson said, her mother made a suggestion that she should seek her master’s degree in library service.
   Twenty years later, that suggestion has proven fortuitous.
   Now come the next 50 years.
   "I’m a writer by vocation, a librarian by profession and a cook by avocation," Ms. Johnson said. And with the next half-century open, there is plenty to put on her to-do list.
   Fittingly, Ms. Johnson does not want her retirement years to be stagnant. Along with caring for her mother, she plans to continue working on a play, based on an incident from her years in New York City. It centers on a group of women coming to terms with a friend’s breast cancer and is based on the story of her roommate from graduate school.
   "The play has been very much on the back burner for a long time," Ms. Johnson says. "I want to use my off hours to write it now."
   Apart from the play, Ms. Johnson intends to further the work she did during her summer in France, only this time in Trenton. Ten years ago, Ms. Johnson was part of the initiative to bring American Friends Service Committee-style projects to Trenton.
   "We do (work camp) projects (in Trenton) twice a year in the spring and the fall," Ms. Johnson said.
   The camps, which work with organizations such as Habitat for Humanity and Isles, are part of a larger beautification project designed to build gardens and repair houses in Trenton’s depressed urban areas.
   "In my retirement I want to work that project even more," she said.
   Despite her busy schedule, Ms. Johnson said she will miss the library and the staff, which she calls "wonderful and creative," and not at all like the stereotype of the strict, authoritarians most people associate with librarians.
   "I hate that stereotype," she said. "I would like to be remembered as someone who made this a warm, inviting, friendly place."