Obituary: Carolyn E. S. Willberg
Carolyn Elizabeth Saffer Willberg of Shelter Island, 76, died on Friday, September 16 at her home on Shelter Island after a six-year battle with lung cancer. Her daughter, Kyle Karen, was with her. Ms. Willberg is survived by her husband, Calvin G. Willberg, who lives in a life-care facility in Cincinnati, Ohio,
For more than 20 years, Ms. Willberg was the director of the Ellensburg Public Library in Ellensburg, Washington. Her daughter, Kyle, said that during her tenure as library director she built a performing arts/community center associated with the library as well as computerized the card catalogue in the 1980s.
Ms. Willberg’s efforts at the Ellensburg Library were well-recognized throughout the community. When she left her job there to accept an offer to teach English at Kansai University of Foreign Studies in Japan in 1992, a patron wrote the Ellensburg Daily Record: “I feel compelled to comment publicly on my tremendous admiration for this woman. She is truly a giant of a woman wrapped in a petite, feminine package. In all my travels, I have never seen a library in any size community, which has had the imaginative leadership that she brought to our library …”
In 2006, Ms. Willberg and her husband came to Shelter Island to be near their daughter, Kyle. At that time, Mr. Willberg was being treated for frontotemporal dementia and Ms. Willberg was recovering from cancer. She said in an interview with Mimi Brennan for the Shelter Island Reporter in 2008 that her husband’s disease and her own were “the two hardest things I’ve faced in my life.”
Even so, she stayed active and was involved with the League of Women Voters, served as Shelter Island Senior Citizens Association president, volunteered for the Historical Society and Shelter Island Public Library and was in the Bell Choir of the Shelter Island Presbyterian Church. She was a member of the Unitarian Church in Sag Harbor, where she was involved with the planting committee to improve the church grounds. She also was the church treasurer.
Ms. Willberg was born on May 2, 1936, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Katherine Bockhop and Raymond Saffer. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in education from Ohio State University and two master’s degrees, one in library science from the University of Washington and another in English as a second language from Central Washington University.
She taught elementary school in Ohio, Alaska before it was a state and Washington State and lived in cities across the country and around the world, including Connecticut, Washington D.C., California and Japan.
“Many who are more flamboyant in style receive more public acclaim,” wrote the author of the letter to the editor of the Daily Record. “Carolyn Willberg did not seek the limelight. She didn’t need to, her light shone through the quality of a small town’s library … our community has been very fortunate to have the spirit, the fire and the love that this giant of a lady brought … ”
In addition to her husband, Ms. Willberg is survived by her daughter Kyle and son-in-law Reed Karen of Shelter Island and daughter Kriota Willberg and son-in-law Robert Sikroyak of White River Junction, Vermont; her brother James Raymond Saffer of Cincinnati, Ohio; and two grandchildren, Raymond and Justine Karen.
A memorial service will be held at 5 p.m. on Saturday, October 8 at the Shelter Island Presbyterian Church, officiated by Alison Cornish from the Unitarian Church, followed by a reception at the American Legion at 6 p.m.
The family asks that donations be made in Ms. Willberg’s memory to the Shelter Island Public Library, P.O. Box 2016, Shelter Island, New York 11964.