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?It?s time,? she said a couple of days before her 25-year career with the library ended. ?Life has bittersweet choices, and I made one.?
Deal literally built the North Carolina Room at Patrick Beaver Memorial Library, turning a cramped space at the old Elbert Ivey Memorial Library into a fascinating repository of local history growing from family trees.
But family lineage is history, Deal said. ?This is a time capsule,? she said of the bright, glass-enclosed room on the upper deck of the ultra-modern library. ?Genealogy is the No. 2 hobby in the nation. It?s history.?
When she came on board at Elbert Ivey, she worked in reference, genealogy and circulation. ?Now, I?m 90 percent genealogy,? Deal said. ?At Elbert Ivey, I could take two steps from my desk and reach anything. Now, I walk a lot.?
Deal could talk about family trees and her experiences at the library for hours. She?s helped solve a lot of problems on family history. Sometimes, her experience and caring goes beyond books and maps.
Like the time a diminutive, almost wizened woman came in for help with finding her babies. She had three daughters who died very young. She could not find the graves of the two who were buried at Oakwood Cemetery. She was told at Oakwood that they weren?t buried there.
Deal went through all the files she had and made phone calls, but to no avail. Then she went to newspaper archives and found the obituaries. She confirmed they were buried at Oakwood, but because the graves weren?t properly marked, other burial sites were closing in on the children?s plots. The woman was able to move ahead because of Deal?s determination.
And there was the visitor trying to find the grandfather who was a bank robber. It took a lot of detective work, but Deal discovered the ancestor was indeed a bank robber who died in prison out West, beyond contact with his family.
?A lot of people don?t realize what we have here,? Deal said, ticking off a few examples from a long list of resources. The North Carolina Room has historical maps of all 100 North Carolina counties. A prized possession is a copy of the R.A. Yoder map of Catawba County that shows not only roads and rivers, but the locations of where everybody lived in 1886. Yes, he?s a Catawba County Yoder who surveyed the entire county.
There are mail route maps that show where people lived and the metes and bounds of much of the real estate. Lots of books and files preserve state, county and family histories. Some books show immigration records, others contain information on military service.
?They?ve been a blessing,? Deal said. ?This is all about North Carolina. A lot of students come here for research. The fourth grade is usually when North Carolina history begins in school.?
Deal relished the amazement from a group of children recently when they toured the library. She reminded them that when they reach the fourth grade, they may need the Carolina Room, and it would be there for them.
She talks more about the library and the people she?s met than herself. She revealed she worked for the Catawba County Library for seven years before she accepted a job in an office. She was just a little bit daunted when she accepted the position at Elbert Ivey.
Deal isn?t a college graduate. ?But I picked up courses on library science and anything else I thought would help,? she said. Over the years, she undertook college-level study in North and South Carolina. She knows the job that, like the North Carolina Room, she fashioned herself.
?People give us books and other things,? she said, ?and that?s really great. They?ll finish a book and give it to us. I have a bigger budget here than at Elbert Ivey ? but there?s only so much you can buy. I tried to buy anything compact and useful,? she said.
That meant going boldly into the digital age with CDs, DVDs, and the Internet to supplement the tried-and-true standbys like microfilm and microfiche. Plus printed pages, of course. She?s also written columns about the library for the Record. She?s a promoter as well as a caretaker.
But she adroitly gets away from talking about herself and returns to the library. ?We have such resources on our website,? she said. ?You can find a lot on the Internet.? And she rattles off several avenues at a researcher?s disposal. It helps that she is writing a manual on how to maneuver in the North Carolina Room ? where to look, how to use census and court records and cover the history stored there.
?If I had known I would have loved history so much, I would have listened better in school ? and listened to my daddy who knew our family history,? she said. That leads to some advice to others: Take notes, make recordings, and talk to family members about your history or it could be lost.
Deal has tended this garden of treasures for decades, and her departure will leave a void for the people accustomed to her friendship and ever-present smile and dependent on her knowledge.
?We hate to lose her,? said Louise Humphrey, the library system?s director. ?A lot of information is in her head. She knows so much about the North Carolina Room and local history. She is enthusiastic about history and genealogy and the people who visit the library.
?It takes years to get that sort of knowledge. She cares about heritage, and she shares her enthusiasm with visitors and the staff. We?ll miss her, but she?s earned her retirement,? Humphrey said.
The North Carolina Room won?t be deserted. Peggy Mainess ? a top-notch educator for many years ? works part-time at the library and she?s spent a lot of time with Deal. Mainess shares Deal?s love of history.
Deal didn?t want to leave, but she has other things she wants to do. She plans to devote more time to her flower garden at her home in Newton. Her husband Andy is the vegetable gardener. They have three children and 11 grandchildren. The kids will get a lot more attention from now on.
?It?s said you have your real family, your church family and your work family,? Deal said. ?You love them all the same. I love them all the same.?
She was a volunteer for a while at Thornton Elementary School and she looks back on that experience as something she would like to do again. Deal said she might volunteer some at the Catawba County Historical Museum, a prospect that excites Melinda Herzog, the executive director. ?We would like nothing better,? she said. Humphrey wouldn?t mind if Deal volunteered from time to time at Patrick Beaver.
?We?re happy for her,? Humphrey said, ?and we hope she comes back to visit and catch us up on what she?s doing.?
Deal looked around her room at the library. It?s simple, but impressive. A person could forget about time there, thanks to her.
?It?s sad,? she admits, ?but I?m closing one chapter of my life and opening another. It?s been good, but it?s time. I?m OK.?
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