Mary Egan lived a life of excitement and adventure, and that was before she started working as a librarian in the Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake School District, where she said her true adventures began.
“It was always about the kids, inspiring the kids to learn to read. I loved them all,” she said.
On Friday, Jan. 11, Mary was honored by a group of women who either worked with her in the library or were members of the Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake Education Foundation. They visited her at the Schuyler Ridge Nursing Home in Clifton Park, where she now resides.
Mary and her husband had donated $3,000 to the foundation in 2000, and the endowment has been used by the foundation to support education over the year. The group was there to thank her for the donation, part of which was recently used to purchase a dozen Redi-speak recording devices to be used throughout the BH-BL school libraries. They were accompanied by Mary’s daughter, Tracy Egan.
The devices can be docked on the library computers and used to record how well a child is reading, or be used in speech therapy. According to Dorie McArthur, the chairman of the BH-BL Education Foundation, there are dozens of uses for the devices.
“Kids love technology,” she said. “They can pretend when they are reading or speaking that they are somebody really special.”
McArthur said they can also be of direct use to teachers, who are increasingly held to higher standards of accountability.
“Teachers are being asked to keep more records,” she said. “This is something that can be used for those purposes.”
McArthur said that not only did the Egans make the large donation, when her husband died Mary also listed the foundation for memorial donations.
“The money is continuing to help the kids that Mary loved so much,” she said.
Although Mary’s husband Bill has passed away and Mary is long retired, their legacy will live on in the town of Ballston.
Born in 1919 in Albany, Mary Egan graduated early from the Academy of the Holy Names, enrolled at NYS Teachers College and received her degree in library science in 1940. She was always grateful for her free education and continued to support the school, now the University at Albany.
After graduation, she worked in New York City for Major Seversky, author of “Victory Through Air Power.” According to Mary, Howard Hughes wanted to meet the author and met Mary instead, following her back to her home in Albany.
“I told my mother to tell him I wasn’t in,” she said with a laugh.
She was first employed by the BH-BL school district during WWII, and it was where she met her husband, William Egan, a Ballston Lake real estate agent. She took a few years to have her four daughters and then returned to work and to college. She received an MS in Education and an MS in Educational Administration.
Mary Egan held library posts at the Albany Public Library, Albany Medical Center and various schools in Schenectady and Shenendehowa before settling into her post at BH-BL in 1961. She was director of libraries and media services from 1961 until her retirement in 1999.
During the group’s recent visit to Schuyler Ridge, stories were traded back and forth and a picture of Egan and the legacy she has left the school district started to emerge.
For instance, she has always been interested in technology and was one of the first educators to recognize the significance of a library becoming a “media center.”
“I was one of the first employees to get a computer at O’Rourke Middle School,” she said. “It grew from there. The librarian at the time didn’t like it. She said it made noise!”
Mary’s daughter Tracy said Mary’s relationship with the children was special.
“If she found out what a child was interested in, she would find a book on that subject and gave it to the child,” said Tracy. “She opened the door to a world of reading.”
Mary Egan remembers one student, Brad Randall, who was always giving teachers trouble because he wouldn’t sit still.
“I told him if he couldn’t sit still, he could learn to read standing up,” she laughed.
Randall went on to become a prominent lawyer in the Florida area and came back several years ago to thank her.
Besides her daughter Tracy, who was a newscaster for local station WTEN until 2008, two other newscasters have graduated from the school district. Jessica Layton is a newscaster on local station WNYT and Kate Snow is a national reporter working for NBC.
Egan loved the theater and became involved in the Ballston Lake Theater along with her husband. A lifelong reader and writer, Mary wrote a book called “Billy’s Village” that contains stories of her husband’s hometown of Ballston Lake. She is currently working on a second book, “Mary’s City,” which is about her life in Arbor Hill and trips to the Adirondacks with her family.
Though the foundation’s visited was spurred by Egan’s donation that continues to touch the lives of students, it was also clear from the laughter in the air and the stories exchanged, that it is not just youngsters who are being touched by a life well lived.