 "Photo: Brennan Wagner/The Siskiyou")
She sat behind her desk in her office on the first floor of Hannon Library. Scattered across her desk are piles of paper work, documents of all kinds and pictures of her family.
By most accounts she is nothing more than another faculty member: an older lady in a lovely blouse and dark trousers with her hair parted to her left.
But, this lady is unlike any other. As the current Government Information Resources Coordinator and Department Chair for Library and Information Science, Deborah Hollens stands as the oldest member of the Southern Oregon University faculty and staff.
For almost 40 years, Deborah has made a career out of working at SOU.
While many people work at multiple jobs after their college years, Deborah started here after graduate school and has continued ever since.
“I started on September 1, 1971,” she says.
Deborah eases into her chair as she thinks about her years prior to working at SOU.
Deborah grew up in southern California, in the town of Glendale.
As she says, “At the time, it was little; now it’s a metropolis.”
After high school, Deborah went to San Fernando Valley State College (now known as California State University-Northridge), and then transferred to University of Southern California to obtain her masters in library sciences.
“I was in graduate school [at USC] where I met the man who worked here before me.”
Though she is currently in charge of all Government documents, Deborah began working as a part-time archivist and part-time reference desk.
“I was offered a 10-month contract,” she says of her first time at SOU.
“When I started, I had no idea what it meant to be an archivist,” she says.
The University sent her to the University of Oregon to learn about the position.
Being the archivist at Southern Oregon College, as SOU was called back then, meant Deborah was in charge of collecting and preserving access to information within various departments and offices on campus.
“Years ago, the librarians had 12-month contracts,” she says.
At the time, Deborah was one of roughly 10 other librarians, but hte only one under a 10-month contract. However, when her contract was due to end, they wanted her to stay on board.
According to Deborah, her and the other librarians presented the idea of the librarians switching to nine-month contracts, effectively cutting their salaries, but keeping Deborah on staff.
“After the [pay] cut, the Department of Health Education and Services wanted to know why,” Deborah says.
It was an effort to meet standards set the decade before with the 1963 Equal Pay Act that required equal pay for minorities, including women to eliminate wage imbalance.
“It was all part of this effort to make sure minorities were paid equal for their work,” she says.
After the investigation, the librarians received a substantial increase in their salaries.
“I was just thankful to get this job,” she says of her first post-graduate venture.
“Coming out of my graduate work, there were so few who found jobs.”
It was late summer and during the end of the Vietnam War when Deborah and her husband, James, drove up to Ashland, Ore.
“I was 23, just married...my first job,” she says of her experience.
For decades, Ashland has been known as a town of alternative lifestyles, with hippies, healthy living gurus and a slew of people that come and go.
“I came from a place where there were a lot of violent demonstrations,” she says of her life in Los Angeles, Calif.
“Being in Ashland was much different,” Deborah says. “This was a quiet place.”
Deborah gained her second master’s in English and now works with many University Seminar professors teaching their students how to find government documents within the library.
“I tell them [the students] they make for sexy bibliographies,” she says about the government documents used by her students.
As she stands up from behind her desk, she begins her walk outside her office to the Government Documents section of the library on the first floor.
“We have a really pristine collection of documents,” she says.
The Oregon Documents Depository Program allows citizens access to government documents.
Nine libraries across the state, including the state library in Salem and Hannon Library at SOU house catalog documents and various collections.
Deborah says what makes the collection at SOU different is its placement.
“The University of Oregon may have more documents, but I think we’re one of the few places that has as many as we do in a single place,” she says, aside from the state library.
In 2004, SOU received the Federal Depository Library of the Year award, the second in the history of the Federal Depository Library Program history.
Between 2001 through 2005, Deborah and many other librarian staff worked tirelessly to create the Southern Oregon Digital Archives, originally funded through the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
“We came up with this idea to digitalize,” Deborah says.
At a time when libraries and other institutions were starting the move to digital archiving, scanning photographs, Deborah and the rest of the staff wanted to take volumes of text and archive it digitally.
Deborah was in charge of overseeing the documents that would be placed in the SODA Bioregions Collection.
In total, eight individuals were tasked with receiving the information and placing it within the system.
Including Deborah, Teresa Montgomery, James Rible, Mary Jane Cedar Face, Lisa Haley, Sue Burkholder, Anne Richards and Karen Menzie, worked together on this project.
Many other documents, both federal and local government, were obtained and archived digitally over the years. Today, SODA now encompasses the Southern Oregon Historical Collection and First Nations Collection, along with the Bioregion Collection.
“I love introducing this,” Deborah says of her work on SODA and in the entire Government Documents section.
“I like the idea of pushing,” she says. “Teaching these kids is so much fun.”
As she rummages through old yearbooks, Deborah locates a yearbook with a photograph of herself as a 23-year-old fresh-faced librarian staff member.
As the youngest staff member, many thought Deborah was a student.
“When I was 23, I looked like I was 16,” she says. One of the yearbooks she’s featured in placed Deborah in the section of graduation seniors instead of faculty members.
“These were the happy days,” she says.
Walking down the hallway, piles of government documents including congressional hearings and research reports are strewn across the tables from a class Deborah recently taught.
The question of how a 10-month contract has turned into a career spanning nearly 40 years is not nearly a mystery as you might think.
Though her life has been full of many happy moments, Deborah admits it hasn’t been tough.
While she grew up in a poor family with four brothers and sisters during the ‘50s, after moving to Ashland, tragedy struck her family, most pivotal in the kidnapping of her daughter.
On Tues, March 11, 1986, “I was teaching a class of Ashland High School students and in walked this police officer,” she says.
Seeing the cop, she recalls making an off-color remark that received no response from the officer. As she walked outside to meet the police officer, she received heartbreaking news.
“He asked who I was and then asked if I was the mother of Meghan Hollens,” she says.
Pumping her hand against her chest rapidly, she shows how fast her heart began to beat.
The police officer revealed her daughter had been kidnapped by two women, one originally from New York and another from Washington.
“It’s funny, you think you have the world by its tail and then this happens,” Deborah says as she leans against one of the bookshelves behind her office.
Meghan, her youngest child, was 20 months old at the time and in daycare at Three Bears Day Care Center, which was previously located on Avery Street in Ashland.
Hollens, upon hearing the news rushed to the police station.
“An old man from across the street was just looking out of the window and noticed something funny,” she says recalling how she was notified of the kidnapping.
That man, James McAvoy, was looking out of his window when he noticed two women suspiciously get into a purple car with Meghan.
The description of the car the man was able to give to the police led to the capture of the two women.
“I got my baby back,” Deborah says as she smiles thinking about the moment she was reunited with her unharmed daughter at the Grants Pass police headquarters. “The Universe was kind to me.”
The two women, Joni Niemeyer and Dorothy Campbell were charged with kidnapping, but later freed.
“She was just crazy,” says Deborah in regards to one of the women charged with the kidnapping.
The other was found to not be culpable for her actions.
Thinking about the experience, Deborah knows her life would have been extremely different had she never found her daughter.
“I’d be looking at every 25 or 26 year old girl I saw wondering, ‘Is this my daughter?’,” she says. “My life would be completely different.”
Her daughter, Meghan, is now 25 and finishing her Bachelor of Science in Nursing at Oregon Health and Science University.
Her son, Peter, was a founding member of On the Rocks, UO’s all male a capella group. At 29, Deborah describes her son as an independent arranger and producer of collegiate a cappella recordings, most noticeably for UO and Oregon State University. His wife, Evynne, was one of the eight original founder’s of Divisi, UO’s all female a capella group. Together, Peter and Evynne regularly work as performers on Royal Caribbean cruise lines several months a year.
Despite her life’s lower points Deborah has come out of it stronger and more passionate.
“Next year when I leave, it’ll be 40 years,” she says. Adding, “I have loved every minute of it.”
When she leaves, Deborah has plans on taking piano and horseback riding lessons, as well as travel.
“Italy for sure,” she says as she lists some of the places she’d like to visit.
From students that have come back to tell her they became librarians because of Deborah or a certain police officer that let her out of a ticket after driving the opposite way on a one-way street, simply because she was “the nice lady at the library,” Deborah has made an impact.
As she puts it, “Students come to me when they need something.”
“I help them find it and they remember that, and remember me,” she says.
High praise doesn’t just come from her former students, but also from her fellow colleagues.
“She is just delightful to work with,” says Mary Jane of Deborah. “She’s a team player and such a collaborator.”
Described as a “bundle of energy” by Jules Filipski.
“It’s hard to believe,” Jules says about Deborah’s long tenure at SOU. “She’s so enthusiastic and loves her work.”
After spending an hour with Deborah, it’s not hard to recognize the avidity she has for her long career, the love she has for the people she’s worked with past and present and the hopes she has for her future.
“I tell people that they might’ve found someone who could’ve done the job better,” Deborah says.
“But they couldn’t have found anyone that loved it more!”
