NEWPORT, N.H. — When Paul Mataruso was around 14 years old, he noticed security vulnerabilities in the wireless system at Richards Free Library in Newport.
“What I found was that their entire network was wide open from the wireless. Anyone could just get right on there and access whatever they wanted,” he recalled.
Mataruso quickly informed someone at the front desk, who went to get library director Andrea Thorpe.
“She looked at the lady at the front desk and said, ‘We have to make this guy our friend,’ and then she looked at me and said ‘Can you fix this right now?’ And I did, then and there,” Mataruso said.
Soon, Thorpe hired Mataruso as a library page, where he worked on the library’s technology system. Nearly 15 years later, he’s still looking after that same system, only this time as the owner of his own IT firm.
“I wouldn’t have my business today without her, her word of mouth and her putting trust in me when I was young,” Mataruso said. “She was my very first customer and my longest customer.”
The 69-year-old Thorpe, who has been the director of the library since 1988, will retire Friday after 33 years leading the library, located in what had been a private home on the Newport Common. Mataruso’s is but one of many Newport lives Thorpe has impacted during her tenure.
“I remember that she was a new graduate with a lot of good ideas and that she was competing against a veteran who had actually been at the library previously, but we felt that her new ideas and new skill set would be better for the library than to have someone return who had done a very good job, but who would have had kind of preconceived notions,” said Charen Urban, who served on the library board of trustees when Thorpe was hired and is a member once again.
They’d been hoping to find someone who would stay 10 years.
“Her commitment and stewardship of the library have really been unflagging,” Urban said. “What I know is that throughout her tenure we have done some really wonderful program development, adding book groups and teen groups and writers groups and there has been a lot of growth in the library in her tenure in terms of programming.”
Thorpe, who lives in Newport, had just earned a master’s degree in library science when she applied for the Newport job.
She had previously served as director of the Etna Library and worked in the libraries at Dartmouth.
Before that, Thorpe was a seventh and eighth grade English teacher — “hormones galore,” she said with a laugh — and had volunteered at the Enfield Public Library when her children were young.
“I became a teacher because I like to share stories and that’s what librarians do: They share stories, they share books, they share information,” Thorpe said. “People share things with you through books that they wouldn’t otherwise.”
The Richards Free Library that Thorpe is retiring from is quite different from the one she arrived at, and the biggest change is evident in technology. The first computer Thorpe encountered at Richards was a Mac donated by a patron: It was sitting in a corner and staff weren’t quite sure what to do with it. She designed the library’s first website in the mid-1990s during a class at Boston’s Simmons College and brought it back on a disk to load it up in Newport.
VHS and cassette tapes gave way to DVDs and CDs, which are now being replaced by streaming. The library’s card catalog is now digitized.
Thorpe sees this all as a positive development, especially when it comes to reference materials.
“Before I couldn’t afford all the reference books we needed to answer questions,” she said. “It makes little tiny libraries like ours compete with bigger ones.”
She’s also embraced — and advocated for — newer forms of technology that people even five years ago might not associate with a library, including a 3D printer, adding video games to materials that patrons can borrow, and computers specific to the youth section.
“It’s really important for kids to have computers that they feel like belong to them,” said youth librarian Mo Churchill-Calkins, who was fresh out of library school when Thorpe hired her seven years ago. “She has just been a fantastic mentor ever since then.”
In addition to library programs and technology, Thorpe has also helped the library board and Friends of Richards Free Library volunteer group with fundraising projects, including the renovation of the upstairs ballroom to use as a community space.
She also volunteers with the annual book fair, which coincides with the Apple Pie Crafts Fair.
“She just puts her heart and soul into that book fair every year,” Estabrook said. “Libraries serve a much different need now than they did 30 years ago, and Andrea has always been able to fill whatever the community has needed from the library.”
That includes mentoring young people in the community, some from the time they were toddlers to when she gave them their first job. Benjamin Cote is one of those people: He first met Thorpe when he was 4 years old at a story time, and she later hired him as a page.
He is now the head of youth services at Tracy Memorial Library in New London and for a time served on the Board of Trustees at Richards Free Library.
“Andrea was a great first boss and she definitely taught me responsibility, and she has very high standards and helped instill a love of libraries that led me to the career that I’m in now,” Cote said. From her, he learned “just what a vital role a library plays in the community and how it’s a space where everyone’s needs can be met.”
Justine Fafara, who has served as the assistant director for seven months, will succeed Thorpe and make between $60,000 and $70,000 a year.
The town allocated roughly $350,000 for the library in its 2020 budget, Thorpe said. The library also relies on fundraising dollars brought in by its board and friends group.
Thorpe may be retiring, but she plans to volunteer running a book group at the library and continue to serve the community she loves.
“I looked a couple times and I never found anything better,” Thorpe said, adding that it was the community; its institutions; the library staff; and above all, the patrons who made it easy to stay.
“This is an incredible place to be, so I’m just happy I got it,” she said.
Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.
