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At Birmingham Public Library, an end to a career of stories

Hannah Wolfson By Hannah Wolfson The Birmingham News
on December 24, 2010 at 11:01 AM
Hope Cooper.jpgHope Cooper earned a reputation for being available around the clock if problems arose at one of the Birmingham Public Library's 20 buildings that she maintained. (The Birmingham News/Hal Yeager)

Hope Cooper may have retired from the Birming­ham Public Library, but she hasn't stopped working.

On a recent morning Coo­per, who as head of the li­brary's facilities helped keep its 20 buildings up and run­ning, was directing a plumber installing new toi­lets at her house, figuring out when to head back in to her office and talking about plans for library buildings. The week before, she deliv­ered poinsettias to most li­brary offices, a habit she's had since budget cuts led to limited holiday decorations for staff.

B u t one t h i n g h a s changed: Cooper has happily returned her library cell phone, so she doesn't have to worry about anyone calling her at 2 a.m. to tell her a disaster needs fixing. "I took the phone calls: My toilet's stopped up, the front door stopped working, the windows have been smashed in," Cooper said. "For me, when the phone went off, there was trouble."

Cooper was one of 25 library employees to retire this month as part of the city of Birmingham's buyout plan for employees; those departing include an associate director, six out of 10 coordinators -- including Cooper -- several branch librarians and a 40-year veteran who drove the book delivery van.

Although Library Director Renee Blalock said all of them will be sorely missed as both employees and friends, Cooper's combination of institutional knowledge and willingness to pitch in will make her shoes particularly difficult to fill.

"She does whatever it takes," said Blalock, who just this week e-mailed Cooper to ask about the dimensions of a sign at the downtown library. "If we have a flood in the middle of the night, she's down here with the guys helping clean up, and that's going to be hard to find someone to do."

Cooper, a Delaware native whose family moved to Birmingham when she was in her teens, started working at the library fresh out of college in 1968. After just a couple of years she realized she wanted to get a master's degree so she could get further, but now she wonders if she should have gone into engineering instead, like her father and brother.

"I have always been curious and I have always wanted to see how things worked, and I was willing to take things apart and put them back together," Cooper said as she sat in her comfortable living room in Birmingham's Glen Iris neighborhood.

That interest got her involved in the early stages of the library's computerized circulation system, back in the days when it required mainframes and programming. While setting it up in the 1970s, she learned more about wiring and installation, and thus about the library's inner workings, which in turn led her into facilities management.

She most recently was in charge of all facilities, running a team of four maintenance men and overseeing renovations at several libraries. When not coaxing a bit more life out of errant heating units or troubleshooting emergencies like gas leaks, ruined carpets and broken windows, she wrote her own grants to get money for new roofs and modernization efforts.

"Money's an issue, and you make it through the cooling season and then, oops, you can't turn the furnaces on," Cooper said. When she took over as coordinator, one of her first tasks was to streamline the system. Back then, every branch contracted for its own lawn service, ran its own maintenance and had different requirements for supplies, from light bulbs to ceiling tiles.

Since then, Cooper has made sure every renovation moved the system closer to standardization to save money and time, and has switched to having city workers t a k e c a r e o f landscaping. She also learned to negotiate with city departments to get the goods and services she needed, despite some bureaucratic red tape.

Cooper can easily rattle off the details of, say, the new elevator at the East Lake branch, the bent window frames at Avondale or the troublesome lights downtown. Even after a couple of weeks off the job, she kept slipping into the first-person present tense when she talked about the library. She has even told Blalock that she should focus on refilling other positions because Cooper's happy to be called when an emergency happens.

But she also plans to return to her librarian roots. After the holidays, she wants to volunteer in the library's Special Collections, helping catalog and digitize some of the treasures hidden there. And her first priority is to go back to the days when she'd bring home a stack of books every weekend and park herself on the couch.

"I want to get back in touch with my brain in an intellectual way," she said. "I can't wait to start reading again."

Join the conversation, add a comment or e-mail: hwolfson@bhamnews.com
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