Alumni Updates
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Mary Levering
M.Lib, 1966
After working for the Library of Congress for 45 years in a variety of diverse positions and different departments, Mary retired as one of the Library's Senior Government Executives in 2011. Mary says: "Working at the Library of Congress with talented people and amazing collections from all over the world inspired me with a great love of travel, adventure and a thirst to learn about other cultures and countries. I have now visited 141 countries on all 7 continents. I just returned in December 2015 from my latest travel adventure on an expedition ship, visiting 7 remote island countries in the South Pacific, meeting local families, and SCUBA diving on pristine reefs. My goal is to visit all 193 independent countries in the world. At home [Maryland] in between my foreign trips, I practice yoga several days a week, am learning to speak Spanish, and volunteer for Chevy Chase at Home, helping older folks age in place."
Richard Waters
M.Lib, 1966
Richard is a full-time library consultant living and working in Dallas, Texas.
Joan Tracy
M.Lib, 1965
Joan retired from Eastern Washington University in 1993, but she keeps up her interest in libraries by submitting recommendations for purchase to the EWU Library and by serving as chair of a book group at the Cheney Community Library. Her daughter is also a librarian, working at North Idaho College in Coeur d'Alene, ID.
Margaret Read MacDonald
M.Lib, 1964
Margaret's newest book is "The Wishing Foxes" (Illustrated by Kitty Harvill; Plum Street Publishers, 2017). It's a Kentucky version of the tale of the kind and unkind girls, retold with Jennifer and Nathaniel Whitman. She has written many books, including "Teaching with Story: Classroom Connections to Storytelling," which she co-authored with Jennifer MacDonald Whitman and Nathaniel Forrest Whitman to encourage teachers to incorporate storytelling into their classrooms. The book won a 2014 Storytelling World Award.
Margaret tells stories and offers workshops across the globe, recently traveling to India, Iceland, Vietnam, Burma, and Thailand.
She is also the artistic director of the PowellsWood Storytelling Festival, which takes place annually in July in Federal Way, WA.
John Cole
M.Lib, 1963
As of 2024, Historian and librarian John Y. Cole received the 2024 Trask award from the Society for History in the Federal Government in recognition of "his innumerable contributions to federal history over the course of his fifty-five year career at the Library of Congress." Before becoming the Library's first official historian in 2016, for more than four decades he served as director of the Center for the Book, which initiated activities such as the National Book Festival and the Library of Congress Literacy Awards. He wrote or edited more than a dozen books about the Library and its activities.
Lethene Parks
M.Lib, 1963
Lethene is Library Director for the Clark County Genealogical Society in Vancouver, Washington, and teaches one or two genealogy classes a year for the society. She is also Chair of the Collections Committee for the Oregon-California Trails Association.
She also writes occasional book reviews and articles. She is working with her daughter on an article about an ancestor who killed a man in Arkansas in 1838, changed his name and went west to California, where he lived for more than 40 years under an assumed name and worked as a physician. It is due to be published sometime in the next year.
Joelle Lyons Everett
M.Lib, 1962
Joelle is a network facilitator for the Plexus Institute, finding speakers and facilitating conference calls and webinars with the goal of sharing good ideas that improve health quality and the patient experience. She has also written and published a book of poetry, Strange and Wonderful Things.
David Hines
M.Lib, 1962
After earning his master's degree in 1962, David spent 27 years with IBM, most of which was in the technical library and subsequently the Competitive Resource Center. He then went to EDS, the company founded by Ross Perot, for nearly 10 years and retired in 2005. He celebrated his 80th birthday on July 22, 2019.
He continues to do volunteer work at Baylor Hospital in Irving, Texas, where he demonstrates a hospital-owned robot for patients, staff and visitors, and plays his Lyon and Healy Troubadour harp. The hospital recently awarded him its "Five Star Spirit Award" for his work.
James Cecil Currey
M.Lib, 1959
James has published two books through Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing: Tiny TommyTaylor's Great Library Adventure: A Fantacy for Young People (2015) and Moclips-by-the-Sea; A Young Man's Adventure (2012).
Tyler Fruichantie
MSIM,
Since graduating in 2014, Tyler has been with Expeditors International. As of 2021, he was working as a product manager.