Allan Appel File Photo
The late James Welbourne.
He could recite a five-page poem from memory. He helped a struggling immigrant learn to read and write in English, and others to pursue careers in the library system. He helped create a neighborhood library branch.
More than 100 friends and family of James Welbourne gathered at that outpost, the Courtland Seymour Wilson branch, to share those memories of a man who left an indelible mark on New Haven.
Welbourne, who died on Aug. 22 at age 69, was New Haven’s city librarian from 2000 to 2010 and played an instrumental role in the opening of the Wilson library in the Hill neighborhood in 2006. (Read his obituary here.)
Those who remembered Welbourne on Sunday had many names for him: librarian, activist, friend, mentor, hero. “I don’t think he knew that he was mentoring me. Or maybe he did … he was kinda sly,” said one speaker, Eric Gurna, as laughter rippled through the audience.
When the Wilson branch — which many of his colleagues refer to as his “baby” — was still being conceived, Welbourne made sure to get input from neighbors by organizing community meetings in the Hill neighborhood.
“He was magnificent,” said Melissa Canham-Clyne, branch manager from the Wilson library, at the service. “And he saw some of that in me.”
Neena Satija Photo
Canham-Clyne (right) with Carol Schreiber at Sunday’s James Welbourne memorial gathering.
Canham-Clyne didn’t meet Welbourne in the best of circumstances. In fact, they met when he was laying her and other workers off during a budget crisis in 2003. At the time, she was a shelver at the downtown and other branches.
A few months later, Welbourne had secured a grant that allowed him to restore Canham-Clyne’s job, continuing to serve as her mentor as she finished her degree in library sciences.
What Welbourne really taught her was that being a librarian isn’t about books, she said. “It’s really about engaging with people, about enriching their lives.” He encouraged her to continue her studies even though she was dyslexic.
But of course, he loved literature and had a legendary ability to memorize poems. Canham-Clyne told one story of an surprise birthday celebration she and some colleagues held for Welbourne a few years ago, during which he stood up and spontaneously began to recite a long poem.
“You don’t expect somebody to read a five-page poem from memory, but he did,” Canham-Clyne said after the service. “You just melted at the words.”
Welbourne was born in Baltimore in 1942. He attended college at the University of Maryland in College Park at age 22, after waiting for the laws preventing him from attending as a black man were struck down. He was assistant director of the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh from 1986 – 1993 and then deputy director of The Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore until 2000.
When he came to New Haven, he immediately set out with a focus to dramatically expand the programs and outreach undertaken by the New Haven Free Public Library system.
He also took people under his wing as a mentor, including Diane Brown. Brown met Welbourne in 2002, when she was a pre-employment training instructor for the city. He moved her position to the main library branch so she could offer her services to job-seekers there.
Brown ended up getting a master’s degree in library sciences. She is now the manager of the Stetson branch in Dixwell.
“He was like a father to me,” Brown said of Welbourne. “He was firm, and strong, and he was compassionate.”
Canham-Clyne offered a one-word description for Welbourne: an “original.” She was referring to a poem Welbourne enjoyed from the book “God Went to Beauty School,” a collection of poems by Cynthia Rylant. The poem ends:
You make life,
you make death.
The things God makes
always turn into
something else and
He does find this good.
But He can’t help missing all the originals.