Helen Lewis, 76, librarian and library leader

Helen K. Lewis of 62 High Ridge, who loved libraries and had been both a Ridgefield school librarian and president of the Ridgefield Library board, died Wednesday, Oct. 18, at Danbury Hospital. She was 76 years old and the wife of Stanley R. Lewis.
When Mrs. Lewis moved here 45 years ago, she had little experience with libraries, other than in using them. However, after volunteering at the Veterans Park School library when her children were pupils, she decided to return to graduate school to earn a master of library science degree at Southern Conn. State College. She became the staff librarian at Scotland School for 20 years.
“It’s catching,” she said in 1976 interview when she was elected president of the Board of Directors of the Ridgefield Library.
A native of Evansville, Ind., Mrs. Lewis was born on May 5, 1924, a daughter of Posey T. and Marguerite Bollenbacher Kime. Her father was a judge in the Indiana Appellate Court and her mother a teacher. She grew up in Indiana and graduated from Penn State University with a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts.
Mrs. Lewis moved to New York where she worked for Glamour magazine. She had met Stanley Lewis. at Penn State and they were married in 1951.
Four years later, the Lewises moved to Ridgefield, living first on Huckleberry Lane and moving to High Ridge in the 1960s.
Long active in gardening and conservation efforts, Mrs. Lewis was appointed one of the original members of the Conservation Commission when it was created in 1962. She was a member of both the Ridgefield and the Caudatowa Garden Clubs.
Mrs. Lewis was also active in the Keeler Tavern, and in the Ridgefield Archives Committee.
But it was libraries that were dearest to her heart, and she was serving on the board of the Ridgefield Library by the mid-1960s. She was Scotland’s School’s first librarian, starting work when the school opened in 1968. She retired in 1988.
“A library should always be the cultural center of the community,” Mrs. Lewis said in 1976. However, when she took over leadership of the Ridgefield Library board, the facility had “fallen by the wayside,” as she put it.
The library had only 31,000 books, less than half what a town of Ridgefield’s size should have had, and the building could hold only 40,000 volumes if it had them. The library was also in financial troubles, and had just asked the town for $20,000 to keep basic operations going.
With the then-new library director, Anita Daubenspeck, Mrs. Lewis began efforts to increase town government support and involvement in what was in 1976 still a privately held and operated library. The library began expanding services, opening Sundays, acquiring more books, and offering evening programs.
“We want to be the information center of the town to help people keep up with the overwhelming flood of information,” Mrs. Lewis said at the time.
Although she was no longer on the library board, Mrs. Lewis kept active in the work of the library as a volunteer with the Friends of the Library.
As might be surmised, Mrs. Lewis was an avid reader and, according to her daughter, Kim Ellen Lewis of New York City, she particularly liked mysteries. “She would have been a very good detective herself,” Ms. Lewis said. “She was very sharp, very logical, very detail-oriented.”
Mrs. Lewis was also outgoing and known by countless Ridgefielders. “At one point, when Ridgefield was much smaller, she probably knew everyone in town,” her daughter said.
Besides her husband and daughter, Mrs. Lewis is survived by a son, Thornton D. Lewis of New York City, and by four grandchildren, Emily, Cora, Marguerite, and Nicholas.
Services were private. Burial was in Ridgebury Cemetery.
A Celebration of Helen’s Life will take place at a time and place to be announced.
Contributions in her memory may be made to the Ridgefield Library, 472 Main Street, Ridgefield CT 06877.
The Kane Funeral Home was in charge of arrangements.