Virginia Boucher

Virginia Boucher died at home on March 9, nearly 96. She was a recognized pioneer in early Boulder mountaineering circles, and internationally prominent as a Librarian. Born May 26, 1929 in Bloomington, Illinois to Curtis Reed and Virginia Ogan Parker, she was 4 months old when the stock market crashed, and the Great Depression was on. Curtis would lose his job, and the family relocated to a freshly winterized cottage on the shore of Lake Michigan, in South Haven. She and her brother Reed spent the rest of their childhood there, up two flights of stairs from the beach. She was an accomplished swimmer, and learned to sail small craft. At age 12 she made her decision to become a librarian, shelving and cataloging books all through school. She spent four summers as a farm worker, picking and later selling blueberries, and a short stint as a waitress. Eschewing the Ivy League, she came west to Colorado College "sight unseen", and her love of the mountains began. Three weeks in, her older dorm mates announced they were going rock climbing, and she was too. She said she was, "Scared half to death", but she kept going back; spending more and more time with her self-taught instructor, fellow CC student, Stanley Boucher. By age 19, she had climbed the Grand Teton. After her Junior year, they were married, spending the next two summers staffing fire lookouts, first in the Medicine Bow mountains, then at Twin Sisters in Rocky Mountain National Park. She returned to Michigan for her Masters in Library Science, meanwhile Stanley was drafted and deployed to Korea. At that point, she became a Boulder resident with a job at the CU Library, continuing climbing with the Colorado Mountain Club; where she was popular with the younger men, because she was old enough to buy beer. After his discharge, the young couple spent two years in Berkeley, she organizing the library at Cutter Laboratories, while he earned his masters in social work at UC; with many nights spent in San Francisco, at the height of the Beats. Once he had his degree in 1957, they returned to Boulder to stay. A year later, son Eric was born, followed by daughter Julie in 1963. Once Julie was 2, Ginnie returned to work, first in Reference at Boulder Public Library, then to Norlin at CU, as head of Interlibrary Loan, where she would stay for 24 years. What began as a part time job with a bare-bones staff grew to a full-time hornet's nest, lending and obtaining rare books and manuscripts from other libraries, from the Soviet Union to India, all without internet or fax machine – teletype was just coming into use. While anti-Vietnam War protests raged outside, she was besieged by professors seeking centuries old books, and grad students researching "Pedagogy of the Tuba" or "Chemical Properties of Barnyard Manure". What she loved most of all was her staff, becoming a lifelong mentor to many. Generations of her "work children" meant she never ran out of younger friends as she aged. In 1969 Virginia organized a conference of 60 librarians from 14 states on, "How to Streamline Inter Library Loan". Success there spawned the initial Colorado Inter Library Loan Conference, which continues to this day as the Colorado Resource Sharing Conference. She did many workshops, speeches and committees for the American Library Association, who in 1984 published her "Inter Library Loan Practices Handbook". As a result, she served two four year committee terms with the International Federation of Libraries and Institutions, speaking at conferences in Paris, Stockholm, Helsinki, Barcelona, Sydney, London, Budapest, New Delhi; and found herself with Stanley trapped in a Moscow hotel, as the coup attempt on Gorbachev roared on below their window. She rode an elephant in India, climbed Ayer's Rock in Australia, and always found time for long city walks, museums, and of course libraries. In 1991 she retired from Norlin as a Full Professor, but not from the library world. She revised the I.L.L. Handbook for the dawning digital age, completed in 1997. In 1993 the American Alpine Club moved their headquarters from New York City to Golden, and asked Ginnie to set up their library, almost from scratch. A 15-year voluntary commute built the AAC Library from a 'pile of boxes on the floor' to a world class lending center of 50,000 books, plus maps and an online resource, where a member climber in Nepal could request a guidebook, and have it delivered to the Himalayas. She also volunteered at Safe House, a Boulder shelter for battered women, Boulder History Museum, and enjoyed singing at Macky in the CU Festival Chorus, and richly rewarding friendships, teaching English as a second language one-on-one for the City of Boulder. She was a lifelong passionate advocate for civil rights, the environment, world peace, equal pay for equal work, and all things DEI; and was a fierce opponent of book banning, and attacks on education and intellectual freedom. During Vietnam, she was very protective of her staff members who avoided the draft, and a Vietnam Veteran Against the War. She loved Mystery novels, Mozart and Opera, and her garden and its birds.She continued to "travel" through her many beautiful books, immersing herself in countries, histories and civilizations for days and weeks at a time, black cat firmly on lap. She is survived by her son Eric, and preceded in death by her husband Stanley, brother C. Reed Parker, and beloved daughter Julie, who perished with her husband Clive Baillie in a 1996 mountaineering accident on Mount Toll. A celebration of her life is in the works; meanwhile donations may be made in her honor to the American Alpine Club, Colorado Mountain Club and the Freedom to Read Foundation.