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| The
West Hartford Public Library is celebrating a donation that will
never be forgotten. The sum of $2 million has been bequeathed
to the library by former librarian Thomas F. Kilfoil who worked
at the library for 33 years, from 1968 to 2002. Mr. Kilfoil
served as head of the circulation department at the library, and
then as head of reference services for many years. He passed away in 2005, at age 82. |
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| Thomas F. Kilfoil | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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When library director Pat Holloway first heard of the gift, she said, "It took my breath away. There has never been a gift of this magnitude in the history of our library. Mr. Kilfoil loved the West Hartford Public Library. He was one of our own staff who influenced many of the younger people who came in contact with him, and his exceptional gift has left us all in a state of semi-shock." In a letter to the library director, Mr. Kilfoil wrote, "It seems fitting to give something back to an institution that gave me so many happy and fulfilling years." According to the terms of the bequest, the West Hartford Library Foundation will manage the donation as a perpetual endowment, specifically to "support and enhance the work of the Adult Reference Division." He added, "I feel that it is important that my gift not serve to reduce Town allocations for the library." |
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| PHOTO: Mr. Kilfoil (far left) with his Reference Staff, (l to r) Gerry Molyneaux, Carol Lennig, Susan Potashner, Judy Eisenberg, and Martha Church | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Mr. Kilfoil was beloved as a model reference librarian, a gentleman of the old school. Courtly, always polite, he dispensed information with a warm smile. Renowned among his colleagues for his thrifty habits, his encyclopedic knowledge on a wide range of subjects and his fondness for a cup of coffee, Tom was a modest man who, as described in a 1989 Hartford Courant article, blushed when his accomplishments were mentioned. Over the years, Mr. Kilfoil served as mentor to countless young librarians, easing them around the reefs and shoals of the reference desk. Joseph Cadieux, the library's current community services librarian, was one such Kilfoil protégé. "Mr. Kilfoil took me in and made me feel that any reference challenge was conquerable, that with persistence any question could be answered. He was a sweet and generous man, someone wholly without pretense, yet with an ability to inspire, and he did," Cadieux said. A committee has been appointed to establish priorities for funding
projects using the interest generated by the fund. They
will determine which adult library services, internships, educational
programming and/or local history projects to fund each year. |
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