ADRIAN — Cathy Chesher didn’t start out intending to be a children’s librarian. 

But now, as she prepares for retirement after 27 years as youth services librarian for Adrian, she says it’ll be hard to give it up.

“I love this job,” she said. “It’s not going to be easy to leave.”

A native of Illinois, Chesher majored in elementary education at Illinois State University. While completing her student teaching requirement, she met a fellow student who had worked in a public library.

“That somehow just triggered something in me,” she said.

She recalls thinking: “The library is my favorite part of the school. I love books, I love reading, I love libraries — maybe I should be a librarian.”

But the road to her eventual career was still not a direct one. For one thing, while at Illinois State she met her husband, Steve. Together they moved back to his hometown of Adrian and started a family. She did go into library work — first as a volunteer in Adrian starting in 1982, then as a part-time clerk, then as a paraprofessional in the Michener Elementary School library, then back to the Adrian library as the youth services assistant — but it wasn’t until later that she decided to go back to school and earn her master’s degree in library science.

Her children, Michael and Amanda, were still young at the time. On top of that, she was working full time at the Lenawee County Courthouse. 

“Going back to school seemed daunting,” she said.

“But I didn’t want to get to 50 years old and have regrets.”

For 3 ½ years she commuted to the University of Michigan … while continuing to work at the courthouse and raising her children.

“It was a long 3 ½ years,” she said. She counts herself lucky to have had Steve to pick up the slack.

At that time, the children’s department still wasn’t on her mind.

“I wanted to be a reference librarian,” she said. “I did not think I was cut out to be a children’s librarian.”

But then she got connected to the human resources manager at the Toledo Lucas County Public Library system, who knew Chesher had experience working with kids and offered her a job in the youth services department at the Maumee branch. “I’ll try it,” she decided.

“And that was over 30 years ago.”

In March 1996, she returned to the Adrian library, this time as the youth services librarian. And that’s where she stayed.

One of her first tasks was managing the project to install the stained glass mural that lines the front of the library children’s department. The panels depict characters from beloved children’s stories — the Cat in the Hat, Curious George, Peter Rabbit, Little Red Riding Hood, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Laura Ingalls and her family. There’s also a local connection: one of the panels shows Prince Tom, a show dog from Adrian who was immortalized in a children’s book by Jean Fritz. The stained glass installation was the brainchild of longtime library director Jule Fosbender, and the panels were made by local artist Jean Lash.

A lot has changed in the last 27 years.

One thing, of course, is technology. “When I came here, we still had the card catalog,” Chesher said. Now there are iPads loaded with educational apps in the children’s department. There’s also a lot more competition for people’s time — children and adults both.

There’s a lot more emphasis now on incorporating STEM into programming (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). However, Chesher said, it was always there — it just wasn’t called that yet.

Librarians have long capitalized on whatever’s popular with kids to get them engaged in the library. In the ’90s, the big thing was R.L. Stine’s “Goosebumps” series. Today, graphic novels are hugely popular and the library has a graphic novel discussion group for tweens.

Teen programming, Chesher said, is something that “has exploded since I first started.” In 1996, the children’s department went up to eighth grade; there was no separate space for teens. The library’s teen corner was created with the help of a grant from the Lenawee Youth Council.

“Teens need their own space and their own collection,” Chesher said. “It’s a unique time in their lives, and kids that age need their own space.”

One of Chesher’s favorite activities is Reading Is Fundamental, a program that has been sponsored by the Kappa Kappa Epsilon service sorority for more than 40 years. Each year, every fourth grader in Adrian Public Schools gets three free books that they can pick out themselves. Chesher visits the classrooms once, volunteers from KKE visit once, and then the children take a field trip to the library. It’s a program that is “just as relevant today as it was then,” she said.

“I would get kids years later and they’d go ‘I know you, you’re the lady that gave me the free books’,” she said.

Storytime is another favorite part of the job — and now, Chesher said, she’s starting to get the children of people she read stories to when they were kids.

Chesher can remember being new on the job, hearing people share their memories of longtime children’s library Julia Cruikshank, and thinking how cool it was that she was remembered so fondly years later. Now she’s in the same position. Not long ago her husband was trying on a suit at the mall in Toledo when an employee came up to her and asked “Do you work at the library in Adrian?” That employee remembered her from childhood.

“You don’t always know what impact you have on people,” she said.

Chesher’s last day on the job will be Dec. 15. Her husband retired in 2020 from the Adrian Parks and Forestry Department, so they plan to take advantage of the freedom to travel and visit their grandchildren in Chicago and California.

“And I’m going to try pickleball,” she said with a laugh, “because isn’t that what retired people do?”

Plenty of things have changed in 27 years, but one thing has not.

“Kids are kids are kids,” Chesher said. “They’re still kids.”

An open house to honor Cathy Chesher on her retirement from the Adrian District Library will take place on Thursday, Dec. 14, from 5-7 p.m. at the library.