1674-2 Helen Muir TUE OCT 18 1988 ED: FINAL
SECTION: LIVING TODAY PAGE: 1C LENGTH: 19. 38" MEDIUM
ILLUST: photo: Helen MUIR
SOURCE: JANE WOOLDRIDGE Herald Staff Writer
DATELINE:
MEMO: SPIRIT OF EXCELLENCE
HELEN MUIR: A CHAMPION OF BOOKS AND LIBRARIES.
Helen Muir describes herself as a leaf in the wind.
"I think life is very chancy. Like this library thing. I didn' t plan to
do it, " she says.
"This library thing" has turned out to be the most public achievement in
a life that has included countless causes, two much-celebrated history books
--Miami, USA (Banyan, $4 . 95 ) and The Biltmore: Beacon for Miami (Pickering,
$9 . 95 ) magazine articles, and stints as a columnist for both The Miami Herald
and The Miami News writing about society, children' s books, celebrities and
theater.
Muir has been a driving force behind the move to create the county-wide
library system that now includes 29 branches (two more are on the way) and is
the largest in the state. Over the past 40 years, she has served on (and often
chaired) library boards in Coconut Grove, Dade County and the state; created
the Friends of the Dade County Public Libraries; founded a series of author-
dinners that have been copied throughout the state; lobbied legislators in
Tallahassee. In the ' 60s, she took to the streets to urge voters to include
libraries in the Decade of Progress bond issue.
She has been honored by numerous organizations, including the city of
Miami and Florida Women' s Hall of Fame. In 1984, she received the National
Trustees Award from the American Library Association. Now 77, she has
scarcely slowed. The new main library may be open and the branches
flourishing, but she is still deeply concerned. "We must have money to buy
books. "
"I always felt libraries were like churches -- sometimes more like
churches than churches, " says Muir, who is an Episcopalian. "Libraries are
supposed to be there, like mothers. But they cost money. People don't really
understand that. "
She came to Miami in 1934 as Helen Theresa Eucharia Flaherty Lennehan
Hansl, a high-school graduate from New York City sent down by a public
relations firm to promote the Roney Plaza Hotel. (She never has gone to
college, and she regrets it, she says . ) She had written for newspapers in her
hometown of Yonkers and in Manhattan, and so it was no surprise when The Miami
Daily News offered her a job. She didn't plan to stay, but the late William
Muir, who was then attorney for Miami Beach developer Carl Fisher, changed her
mind.
Helen Muir has loved books since her grandpa John Henry Augustin
Flaherty taught her to read the Gold Soap wrappers in the kitchen when she was
4 years old. To this day, she considers Ralph Waldo Emerson one of her closest
friends .
Along the way, she made friends with some of the authors she admired.
She interviewed Robert Frost one year when he wintered in Coconut Grove; the
two became fast friends. "I should write about him before I die. I keep
pulling back from it. I still have a prescription bottle of pills the doctor
gave him. " Philip Wylie came to the Muir' s house to die. William McFee spent
two months with the family, sipping tea and martinis.
Her formal involvement with libraries grew out of a tragedy. When her
second daughter, Melissa, was killed by a truck in 1944 at age 4 , Muir created
a memorial of words: a children' s book collection for the Coconut Grove
Library. (She also founded the Honor With Books program, which encourages
people to donate books in someone' s memory or honor. ) Then she joined the
Grove library' s board, and then she was appointed to the city' s library board,
and from there things snowballed.
"I was just one person doing what came naturally, one step at a time, "
she says, slightly embarrassed by the attention. "You want to do something
with your life. Everyone has the need to develop as a person. I was trying to
get a shape, to understand who I was. Whatever degree of assistance you can
give -- surely it matters deeply in the scheme of things. You have to work at
life. I feel sorry for people who don' t know that. "
Marguerite Carden, assistant director of Dade ' s library system, says,
"Four million books were checked out of Dade libraries last year. Each one of
those homes has been directly affected by what Helen has been committed to.
She didn't do it single-handedly. But if she hadn 't hung on, things would be
different. "
Though she insists she is fundamentally a traditionalist, Muir often
ignored the mores of her generation. She was a working mother when others of
her generation and social status stayed at home. She traveled alone in Europe.
She spoke out determinedly on the issues that mattered to her, writing as
early as the 1950s that television would ruin children' s minds.
Years ago, an acquaintance asked snidely whether she really had to work.
She answered: "I would have died if I 'd had to play bridge all the
time. "
ADDED TERMS: biography helen muir mh award
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