Reflections on a rewarding journey with Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall

This is my final column in the Signal Item.

I have enjoyed writing them over the last several years. More importantly, the Signal Item has written myriad articles about happenings at the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall over the last 122 years. It’s a relationship!

I am not parting ways with this valued newspaper. Rather, my tenure as executive director of the library & Music Hall draws to a close on Dec. 29. I am beginning a new chapter — a new book? It’s called retirement.

(Though, once again, I go on record asking the Signal Item to resume delivering this publication to Carnegie, the town where its antecedent first published as the Mansfield Item on Jan. 7, 1873. Come back home!)

I began this journey when the Chartiers Valley Partnership launched its campaign to restore the building in 2003. (How we miss you, Bill Manby, Charlie Goetz and Bill English …) At the time, decades of entrenched poverty had taken a severe toll on the 35,000-square-foot facility. Many believed the building should be torn down.

The photo compilation included with this article makes that hard to believe. The photograph documents just how far the Carnegie Carnegie has come. The facility is beautiful, vibrant and beloved!

But the photo cannot capture the amazing community support that laid the foundation for and continues to sustain the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall’s transformation from moribund to magical.

The community donated $60,000 in the two weeks between the Sept. 17, 2004, flood that ravaged Carnegie and the Sept. 30 deadline to secure a $500,000 challenge grant. It is now $16 million later.

Community support has only grown since then. One of my proudest moments came in late 2015. The ACFL&MH signed a 20-year contract with Carnegie Borough that gave the institution stable and generous funding for the first time in its history. Our mission “to build community” had taken root.

Nor does the photo capture the range and breadth of services, programs and performances that take place at the ACFL&MH. It’s not “Maggie hyperbole” to say that the Carnegie Carnegie has something for almost everyone in its beautiful library, acoustically superb music hall and national treasure of a Civil War room.

There is not space in these monthly columns to cite the range and breadth of ACFL&MH services, programs and performances. Go to carnegiecarnegie.org and sign up for our monthly programming eblast. It comes out at the end of every month, highlighting the following month’s offerings.

I can only single out a sample from each of our program areas. The library is collaborating with Nandanik Dance Troupe, Get it From Nature Arts and Kanak Iyer on a program celebrating Pongal, the Hindu Harvest Festival, Jan. 15-18. Program date and details are to be determined.

And please don’t miss “Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait” on Feb. 4. I won’t! Copland composed this piece during World War II to remind Americans that we have been through difficult times before. Lincoln’s stirring oratory is incorporated into the music. Duquesne University’s outstanding Wind Symphony performs an afternoon concert of Americana under the baton of Dr. James Gourlay.

And we are honored that Rocky Bleier is serving as narrator for the Copland piece.

The ACFL&MH’s 2024 Civil War Symposium, “Riding a Raid: The Paradigms and Personalities of Civil War Raids,” takes place on April 13. Civil War enthusiasts from across the country attend. The last two symposiums sold out.

I won’t even write about the Studio, our alternative performance space with a club vibe, or the lovely Library Park. Come discover them for yourselves!

Is it bittersweet to move on? A little. But I am really looking forward to a rewarding retirement. It will be enhanced by what a joy and privilege my last 20 years at the Library & Music Hall have been.

Happy Holiday. Thank you.