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Photo by Frank Couch.
Longtime Emmet O’Neal Library employee Doris Young remembers the exact day she began working for the library: April 1, 1975.
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Photo by Sarah Cook.
Young looks over library books inside her office. Young, 66, said although retirement is something she thinks about, she doesn’t know when it will happen.
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Photo courtesy of Doris Young.
Young poses with a group of people during an Emmet O’Neal Library function.
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Photo courtesy of Doris Young.
Doris Young poses with a group of people during a Halloween party at Emmet O’Neal Library.
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Thousands of books line the shelves of Emmet O’Neal Library — and there’s a good chance, at one time or another, they passed through the hands of Doris Young.
Forty years ago, Young spotted an ad for a library page at Emmet O’Neal. Back then, Young pointed out, jobs were advertised on a microfiche machine at the city employment office downtown, on the corner of Eighth Avenue and 19th Street. The 26-year-old had a husband and two young children at the time.
“I saw the job, and of course, I had never even heard of Mountain Brook,” Young said, who grew up in Catherine, an unincorporated community in Wilcox County. She met her husband at a juke joint her mother owned, and after the pair tied the knot, they packed their bags for Birmingham.
Young, who stands tall at 6-foot-1, said she can recall the exact day she started working at the library — April 1, 1975. She was the first black woman, other than custodial workers, to be hired as a full-time employee.
“People still treated you like you were just supposed to be the help, and that’s it,” she said.
With Birmingham still sifting through the desegregation process, Young was confronted with a sometimes-tense work environment. She said she decided from day one, however, that she wouldn’t let anything — or anyone — chase her away.
“You just have to leave your feelings at home and pick them up when you get back if you don’t want to be walked on,” Young said of her first few years at the library. “If I was going to leave, I was going to leave on my own. I wasn’t going to let anyone run me away.”
Once while shelving books, Young overheard a patron refer to her as “colored,” and asked a staffer if Young would carry her books to her car. Young didn’t perform the task.
“If she would have asked me because I was a person, a lady, or said my name — then I would have been glad to do it,” she said. “I was not just a colored girl. I was a wife, a mother.”
Young said she guessed it was her firm stance — and her penchant for looking on the bright side — that kept her coming back to work during those first few years.
She was eventually promoted to clerk, and then in 1989, Young was named manager. Today, Young’s business card reads circulation department head — and her infectious personality, in many ways, has become woven into the fabric of the Mountain Brook community.
Young said she remembers each wall knocked down, each department addition and renovation made to the library. She’s seen children grow up between the library’s stacks — and eventually bring their own children to experience the wonder of reading.
“Really, it’s time for me to retire, and I just hate to admit it to myself,” Young said.
And although retirement may be on her mind, the 66-year-old isn’t saying when that will happen.
Technical Services Manager Nancy Sexton — whose 35 years at the library rival Young’s 40 — said the library won’t be the same whenever Young finally decides to say goodbye.
“[We’re] almost like an old couple where we finish each others sentences,” Sexton said of the pair’s friendship. “It’s been fun watching how things have changed [at the library], and you look back on it, and in some ways it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long.”
While looking at old photos from library functions, Sexton pointed out her hairstyle, which, she said is indicative of the year the photo was taken — probably sometime in the late ’90s, she guessed. “We’ve definitely come a long way,” she said with a laugh.
Recently, Young chatted with a former Mountain Brook firefighter who asked when she would finally hang up her hat and retire.
“He told me, ‘Doris, you do realize you’re paying the city to work, don’t you?’” Young said with a grin.
And while Young admitted her last chapter at the library is drawing near, she said she’s thankful for all the years she’s been able to spend at Emmet O’Neal. Sexton said once Young decides to leave — which will be on her own accord, of course — the library will lose something special.
“Every time we go somewhere, everyone knows her,” Sexton said, noting that Young usually blames her instant recognition on her height — but Sexton knows it’s because of something more. “She’s the kind of person who has never met a stranger. I wouldn’t want to be the person who has to fill her shoes.”
