The sun chased off a brief shower of rain as people trickled out of Ablah Library on Thursday afternoon. The staff gathered to dedicate a stone tile inscribed with the name of their former colleague.
Mary Nelson, who worked as the research and operations manager for the library’s Special Collections, died in July. Her colleagues recently raised money to buy her a memorial in WSU’s Plaza of Heroines: her name carved into a piece of marble among the names of other influential women at the university.
After the brief ceremony, Ginger Baker, a metadata specialist at Ablah, said that day was a good description of the kind of person Nelson was.
“It was raining until the memorial started, and everything turned into sunlight. That was Mary,” Baker said.
‘That was the thrill of the job, really — helping people’
After attending the dedication event, Nelson’s siblings recalled their sister and her work.
Ablah’s Special Collections houses rare documents and manuscripts, including records of the university’s history.
Anna Uhlig and David Nelson, Nelson’s sister and brother, said Nelson’s love of history was apparent even before she began working at WSU.
“She just enjoyed it a lot,” David Nelson said.
Nelson’s work was far-reaching. People who knew Nelson told the Wichita Eagle after her death that her knowledge of history, her ability to navigate and find records and, most of all, her determination in helping people find the information they needed impacted many.
“That inquisitive, curious mind of hers … was ready to investigate for people,” Uhlig said. “That was the thrill of the job, really — helping people find those things that they were so interested in.”
Uhlig said Nelson was “hard working,” and not just at her job.
To her siblings, their sister’s work was only a fraction of the person she was. Nelson also loved music; she sang and played the piano and flute. She loved animals and always recycled.
“(Nelson was a) very thoughtful person, too,” Uhlig said. “She cared about her friends and her family and the environment.”
Nelson is also survived by her husband, Mickey, who wasn’t able to attend due to poor health. According to Uhlig, while the couple never had children, Nelson was a devoted aunt and pet parent, known to raise kittens over the years.
“I think the nurturing came out with those animals,” Uhlig said.
Uhlig and Nelson attended exercise classes together up to a few weeks before Nelson’s death.
“She thought of it,” Nelson said. “She said, ‘You know, I know you’re trying to get stronger, too,’ and ‘How about going to a class?’”
They would take the hour-long class together, take a walk, then take another class before concluding with 30 minutes of “sister time” to talk afterward.
“And she always outworked me, by far,” Uhlig said with a laugh. “She was a good motivator, in other words.”
A lasting impact
After a battle with cancer, Nelson was doing better, Uhlig said. According to Nelson’s family members and Brent Mai, WSU’s dean of university libraries, her death was unexpected.
After Nelson’s death, the library and its patrons felt her absence.
“It was really, really hard,” Baker said.
After they learned of her death, “everybody left,” Baker said.
“It kind of hit everybody a little differently, and not just here, the entire community,” Baker said. “We still get calls to this day — people looking for her. A couple of people, once they found out she wasn’t here, they just hung up the phone and said ‘Nope, I’ll get help elsewhere.’”
Inside the library, there’s a case full of pictures of Nelson, put up after her death.
“The display has been up for a few months,” Baker said. “I doubt we’ll take it down for a while because it would probably upset people if we did. She was special.”
Nelson’s former colleagues are also honoring her by taking care of the plants in the library.
“One of the things that her husband said after she was gone was, “Take care of the plants. Don’t let the plants die,’” Baker said. “So I’m going to go water those.”
Baker said that filling in for Nelson’s absence was difficult. Though the library had recently hired a new employee to work alongside Nelson, no one knew as much about Ablah’s Special Collections as Nelson did.
“She is Special Collections,” Baker said. “She’ll always be missed, I think, by everybody.”
While the library continues to adjust to operating without Nelson, Baker said there is plenty to learn from her, like the relationship she had with colleagues, student workers and people who utilized the library.
“When I hire students, I try to do the same thing that she did,” Baker said. “You know, they still know that they can always come back and talk to me.”
