Community in Action

Text by Janet Gokay Mea
Photo by Heath Hughes

Mention Kelly Kandra Hughes, the Norfolk Library’s community engagement coordinator, to most of the library’s patrons and the first response usually is, “Oh, she’s done so much for this town!”

And indeed, both she and her husband, Heath, who works as the office manager for Great Mountain Forest, have been tireless in their contributions to Norfolk. Ever since they arrived here in the fall of 2016, “whenever there was a call for volunteers, we’d do it,” Hughes said.

They’d seen an ad on TrustedHousesitters.com that had been placed by Norfolk’s Bella and Mark Erder, who were looking for a dog and house sitter. The Hugheses came, and Kelly Hughes fell in love with the Erders four dogs, especially the littlest, Faith, a “mutt from Hong Kong.” As Hughes noted, “We had plenty of time to spread good citizenship around town.”

The move to Norfolk was part of a sea change in their lives. Hughes had earned a Ph.D. in quantitative psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2007 and promptly landed a tenure-track position at Benedictine University in Lisle, Ill., but she had a problem: narcolepsy. “I fell asleep at my job interview,” Hughes said. Her parents had taken her for a sleep analysis at age 15, but it would not be until 16 years later, when she was 31, that her condition was accurately diagnosed—apparently a common mistake.

She took a sabbatical in 2014 and realized that she didn’t miss teaching statistics at all. It was the wrong career for her. She taught for one more year, met and married Heath in 2016, and they asked themselves: How could we live on less?

For the next four years, Kelly and Heath alternated dog-and-house sitting jobs with trips across the country. And for Kelly, a dream come true: a stint in the fall of 2018 as a polar bear tourism volunteer at the Churchill Northern Studies Center in Manitoba, Canada.

In the summer of 2019, Ann Havemeyer, director of the Norfolk Library, asked Hughes to be her assistant. “Of course I was flattered. I just loved the library, and I’ve always loved books and writing . . . and it was only 12 hours a week,“ Hughes said. But soon the pandemic hit, and the library needed to make some changes. 

Hughes suggested they offer a Great Course online, “Outsmart Yourself: Brain-based Strategies to a Better You,” which was a success. Hughes continued to offer other Great Courses through the Norfolk Library and at the Congregational Church.

In January 2020, she taught a workshop on decluttering and living a minimalist lifestyle at the Scoville Memorial Library that was attended by more than 100 people, and other libraries started asking her to do online programs. The initial success of the Scoville program led to a two-and-a-half-hour online minimalism workshop, where she asked participants to return in two weeks for an “accountability” assessment. About 15 people returned. They’ve continued to meet every other Saturday since March of last year. Together they’ve read and studied nonfiction personal growth books and now are listening to and discussing TED Talks.

Hughes has made a point of investigating what other libraries are doing during the pandemic and has contacted outside presenters to do programs for the Norfolk Library. “We’ve had a lot of success with the travel programs, in particular,” she noted. “It’s really nice to have these people in Norfolk who could present really good programs: John Bunker on the national parks, Gerry Griswold on Iceland and Patagonia, Michael Cobb on Galicia …”

The library’s online programs helped connect people during the pandemic. Hughes shared the statistics: “From July 1, 2020, to June 30, 2021, the Norfolk Library offered 152 adult programs (this includes Mark Scarbrough’s book group, the Norfolk Knitters, lectures, Great Courses, etc.), and we had 3,740 virtual attendees.”

This past summer, the Norfolk Economic Development Commission and the Botelle PTO organized a summer-long series of Friday Nights on the Green. Hughes researched other programs the library had put on in the past and noticed that there had been a pet parade in 2006. The second week in June just happened to be National Pet Appreciation Week, so the library organized a pet parade, which was a great success. More than 30 pets (mostly dogs), owners, kids and games filled the green  “It was exactly what we were all waiting for to bring us out of our pandemic funk,” Hughes said. “Those Friday night programs were just great. Everybody just stepped up and helped out.”

Earlier this fall, Kelly and Heath were considering moving from Norfolk, wanting to live somewhere warmer for the winter. Luckily, Norfolk turns out to be a hard place to leave, and the Hugheses have decided—for now at least—to stay.