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An Amazing Librarian Who Went Beyond the Call of Duty

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Guest story submitted by Helen Charov

It had taken me 20 years to achieve what had been a dream for decades. When I retired from a career in non profit management in Hartford, I gave myself permission to devote all my energy into finishing the book that I had walked around with for so long “in my head”. I knew it was a long shot in today’s crowded book marketplace, dominated by successful authors and celebrity memoirs. But the challenge was before me, and miraculously, two years later the book was picked up by a major publisher making me, at age 72, a first-time author. I remember thinking, “pinch me!”

The hardest part was switching from comfortably promoting causes which I had a burning passion for, to developing a marketing campaign for my own story. I wasn’t a natural at self-promotion! Writing a pitch letter about my book took some gumption to focus on what might be of interest to the reading public, but I found that enthusiastic early readers along the Connecticut shoreline were happy to introduce me to their book clubs in Deep River, Essex and Guilford.

Over the course of a year, my book talks evolved from small gatherings of readers who asked me to tell them more about my mother’s account of her escape from Soviet Russia, to longer slide presentations at senior centers, the World Affairs Council, and libraries across Connecticut and New England. I was humbled and grateful for the interest in my mother’s life that the book generated.

Nowhere was I better served in reaching out to audiences than by the librarians who created posters announcing my book talk at their respective libraries. Every poster was different, whether it was inviting patrons to a “local East Haddam author talk” or enticing them to learn of “Scarlett O’Hara of the Eastern Front.”

The most dramatic poster was created by the research librarian of the Sturgis Library in Barnstable, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, for reasons not even she fathomed at the time.

National Digital Archives

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Gabrielle Faria-Kalkanis, the Sturgis librarian, had taken the extraordinary initiative to search for a historical photograph of the day that Hitler’s 6^th army entered Donetsk, (then called Stalino) in Ukraine, in October 1941. That day was described in my mother’s account of the Nazi invasion of her home city. The poster she proposed to me included a part of the photograph she had found in the National Digital Archives, in Poland. (See poster below ).

Photo courtesy of National Digital Archives, Poland, as discovered by Sturgis Librarian, Gabrielle Faria-Kalkanis.

She suggested if I wanted to see the full archival photograph I could view it on the Polish website by going to the link she provided to me. Here it is:

When I clicked on the Polish archival photograph, my jaw dropped! Above the marching army soldiers which the librarian had used in the library poster was a figure that looked like it could be my mother, standing there with my toddler sister!

Helen Charov potential mother and sister.jpg

Courtesy of Helen Charov

I had just recently found an original photograph of my white-shawled mother, and my sister, in some family photos. Could the mystery woman in the archival war photo be my mother?

There’s no way to know now. It’s been almost 20 years since my mother died and my sister is gone too, although she remembered the beautiful white shawl and especially our mother’s warm boots!

For one thing I am sure, that I am grateful to a librarian who went way beyond the call of duty to attract readers to an intriguing story about a mother’s love and a daughter’s commitment to keeping her memory alive.