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Date: 7/26/2023
SOMERS — On July 21, the Somers Public Library hosted a farewell gathering for Shirley Warner, a Somers resident who has dedicated 35 years of service to the town as chairman and member of the Library Board of Trustees. Warner is moving to Arlington, Virginia to be closer to her family after the passing of her husband earlier this year.
“I’ll have a lot of family time,” Warner said. “I’m actually going to be right next door to one of my granddaughters and her husband and children who are two and four years old, so I think I’ll have a few things to do.”
Library Director Joanne Nichting said, “I immediately found her to be very knowledgeable and helpful with introducing me to the library. She knows a lot of the library’s history and the board has relied on her many times to recall why things are the way they are or how something originated.”
She went on to say, “She also has great ideas for current issues and works well with everyone.
Personally, I find her a joy to spend time with. We often have lively conversations about the library, the town, and all things in between. I will miss her greatly when she leaves, but I am happy for her in this next stage of her life.”
Warner has been a resident of Somers since 1978. She grew up in a small town in Nebraska and would go to the children’s portion of that library early on. She still has books that she had as a child, which she is passing down to grandchildren and great grandchildren. A woman Warner knew was on the library board. She had asked Warner to run, so she did and was elected to the Library Board in 1987. Warner told Reminder Publishing she’s been a library user since she was a child, but she never knew much about the workings of the library. Being a board member and chairman gave Warner an education on the workings of running and financing a library that she wasn’t aware of in the beginning, as well as giving her a heightened sense of community.
Some of the many projects and efforts Warner participated in include the building of the new library in 1988, the expansion of the library in 2009, managing the requirements of the coronavirus pandemic, working with five library directors and spending many hours contributing ideas to better serve the townspeople of Somers through the library. In addition, Warner was involved with the Somers Village Players. Her first love is theater and she has a degree in theater. She has been active all around the country being an army wife for 25 years, so she’s been in theater from Hawaii to Massachusetts. Warner was also on the committee that established the Cultural Commission. Nonetheless her proudest moment was the renovation and expansion of the library.
“We were crunching space over the years and the original library didn’t have a separate children’s room. That was something we needed,” said Warner. “Now, we have a children’s room and it’s a whole section by itself. We also have a room dedicated for teens and four study rooms.”
She continued, “We realized these are the things we need. Today, there’s different challenges and different things we need, but what we have is serving us very well.”
Warner hopes that the board will continue to be supportive of the library programs, keep up with all of the innovations and make the library more of a community resource rather than a place to check out books, making it as vibrant and up to date as possible.
She wants to be remembered as someone who did her part to make the town better.