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Contact: Liz Carroll
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Release date: January 10, 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

"She was the welcoming face of the GCC Library": Carolyn Bellany says goodbye after 20 years of helping students

"She had a real, true concern for student success,” says Deborah Chown, who worked alongside Carolyn Bellany in the GCC library.

That's probably the highest tribute Bellany could receive, because it's the quality that meant the most to her as a student. "I graduated from GCC in 1966 and I went, beyond that, to UMass,” says Bellany. "But nothing was like the education I got at GCC because it's small and people really care. It's always been that way, and it's that way now.”

"She wanted every person who walked in that door to have a very positive library experience,” says Chown, "even if that meant spending time with them, teaching the same thing over and over again until they got it. I think she contributed to a lot of students' success at the college.”

"I tried to make everyone who came into the library feel important and I feel that's what GCC did for me and everybody else,” says Bellany. "You're not a number, and you're not just somebody that they have to deal with. Everybody is really important as a person, as a student and as a learner. I tried to show that by treating everyone kindly and with patience, especially if I thought someone was afraid of the library, maybe afraid of the computers.”

"If someone needed help,” recalls Carolyn's colleague in the library, Hope Schneider, "she'd walk them over to the computer, she'd sit with them, and really explain everything to them. She was patient with everybody. Some people would come to her specially, I think, because she was very accepting. She radiated receptiveness, and I think people were drawn to that.”

That, and her sense of humor, according to colleagues.

Chown recounts a favorite story: "One morning, she drove to work, parked in the faculty parking lot and as she's walking down the hallway, she hears this th-thump, th-thump, th-thump. She'd stop and it would stop, and she'd look around and she couldn't hear anything. But the minute she started back up again, she'd hear this th-thump, th-thump, th-thump. So finally she made her way to the library, got inside, took off her sweater, and there was a wooden hanger hanging off the back of her sweater!”

"So we all joke about the time she wore a coathanger to work!” says Schneider. "She could laugh at herself.”

Bellany's farewell party was like old home days at the college. "We saw retirees come back because they wanted to be there with her,” says library director Carol Letson. "It meant a great deal to Carolyn to see so many people come together, including four generations of her family.”

Not surprisingly, retirement for Carolyn Bellany means an opportunity to serve. "I'd like to find a place where I can do some volunteer work,” she said recently, "something where I can feel I'm doing some immediate work to help people. I just feel that's one of our missions in life; that's one of the reasons we're here, to help other people and to be kind.”