Letter to Aunt Ellen on Virginia Rugheimer's appointment as her successor at the Library, 13 July 1948 (page 1)
Book 1, Page 530 ·1948
Transcription
July 13, 1948
Dearest Aunt Ellen: —
Yesterday Miss Peters and Miss Quigley returned from their vacations and could hardly wait to tell me about their visit with you — they said that they had never met a more delightful person with a keener mind. They were just as pleased as children when they found out that their mention of Virginia Rugheimer as your successor was the first that I had heard of it. To think that they were the first to tell me what they could well see was very good news to me. I am so pleased over it, because I know that you are also — and that
AI Notes
First page of a two-page handwritten letter in blue ink on plain cream paper, dated 13 July 1948 and addressed ‘Dearest Aunt Ellen.’ The writer signs herself ‘Ellen’ on page 531 (the continuation), and is writing to her aunt Ellen Milliken FitzSimons (b. 1862, d. 1953), the Charleston Library Society Librarian who served from 1898 to 1948 — the letter is congratulating Aunt Ellen on the choice of Virginia Rugheimer as her successor at the Library Society. Miss Peters and Miss Quigley, who have just returned from visiting Aunt Ellen, are colleagues of the writer in the New York office where she works (cf. p. 551–552, where Ellen M. FitzSimons describes ‘my New York home’ and ‘my work and my friends’). Faint ink showing through from the reverse side at the top of the sheet.
Continues on page 531.
The “succession” the writer is celebrating closed a half-century chapter at the Charleston Library Society: Aunt Ellen had been librarian since 1898, and Virginia Rugheimer was named her successor in summer 1948. Rugheimer would in turn serve until 1968 — twenty more years — so the moment is the orderly handing-off of a uniquely long-tenured Charleston institution.