At 88, Marge Vessalo could have been retired decades ago.
But the North Huntingdon resident has no plans to give up her one-day-a-week job at the Norwin Public Library in Irwin.
“Retire from the library? Probably never. I think that it is good for the brain,” said Vessalo, who started working as a part-time library employee in March 1978.
“I love my work and my boss is certainly great,” Vessalo said, referring to Diana Falk, library director.
“Marge is a favorite among the staff. She has helped train so many employees over the years, and much of the great service we offer is to Marge’s influence. She has a really great attitude,” said Falk, who “inherited” Vessalo when she started working at the library in 2005.
Vessalo had worked as a teacher’s aide before starting to work three or four days a week at the library. She had stayed home raising her three children — two sons and a daughter — before going into the workforce when her children were older.
Vessalo’s first job at the library was working in a small trailer set up in the Norwin Town Square shopping center along Route 30 in North Huntingdon. The library, then based in downtown Irwin, referred to the satellite branch as a reading station.
“We had a clientele (at the reading station) that we did everything for but read the books to them,” Vessalo said.
She opted to work evenings for very practical reasons.
“I worked the evenings all those years because we could not afford day care,” Vessalo said. “I did whatever that needed to be done.”
Vessalo said she has learned a lot while working with books for the past 46 years.
“I know a little about a lot of things, but not a lot about anything,” Vessalo said.
As a concession to age, Vessalo stopped reshelving books, even though she liked doing it.
“I miss the shelving because that is when you learn a lot about everything. My head thinks I can do it, but my body cannot,” Vessalo said.
Now, she attaches the covers to the new books that go on the shelves, which gives her a chance to see the books that will soon be available to patrons.
“I’m lucky to get a simple job,” Vessalo said as she sat behind a desk covered with books and book covers.
“Sometimes it’s hard to remember her age,” Falk said.
Mon Valley memories
Vessalo has a lifetime of memories growing up in the Mon Valley that few people can share and experiences that are hard to imagine.
Vessalo grew up in Duquesne and had an upbringing that was similar to so many of those raised in the Mon Valley in the 1930s and 1940s.
She was the youngest of five children of immigrant parents. Her father, who joined his neighbors in working for U.S. Steel Corp.’s Duquesne Steel Works, came from Russia. Her mother, who came from Czechoslovakia, was a homemaker.
The foreign language spoken in their home was English. When her oldest brother and sister went off to the parochial school in Duquesne, they did not speak English.
She remembered dealing with pollution from the mills.
“We went to school covered in soot,” Vessalo said.
Kennywood Park was 2 miles from home and the family had no car, so she walked there to her high school job. Streetcars were the mode of transportation into Downtown Pittsburgh for shopping excursions. McKeesport, with its mills going strong, was a booming town.
What hasn’t faded has been her love for libraries and books, something that grew when she started working at the library.
“I did not get into reading until I started working here at age 42. I read a lot. I like contemporary, I like fluff,” Vessalo said.
She is a big proponent of libraries.
“This library is a great asset. A library is almost like a school. If you have a good library, you have a good community. I hope this library never ends.”