Marion Mossuto bestows gift reflecting her love of libraries

Tass Morrison

The estate of Marion Mossuto, former president of the Friends of the Stayton Library, has announced a gift of at least $394,000 to the Stayton Public Library Foundation. Mossuto died Dec. 21, 2007. Details of her will are still being sorted out.

“This is an extraordinary gift,” Library Foundation President Dave Karr said on learning of the Mossuto estate gift. “We are very appreciative that Marion chose to make this gift to the Library Foundation. Marion was a staunch supporter of the library since her arrival in Stayton in 2000. She will be sorely missed.

“This is a fine example of a member of our community stepping up to meet the need and I’m sure that Marion would want this contribution to encourage others to make a significant gift to support the ongoing needs of the library.”

Substantial gifts such as Mossuto’s bring the opportunity to name a portion of the library, and Mossuto chose the new workroom and the Adult Reading Center to bear her name. Karr said she told him last year that she was going to include the library in her estate planning and that she hoped it would be one of many such arrangements from local supporters.

The foundation plans to use the money to pay off the remaining construction costs of the new addition and to seed the Endowment Fund earlier than anticipated.

Libraries played a part in Mossuto’s life since she was 6 years old and attended story time in her hometown library in Bellevue, Wash. At age 12 she began volunteering in the library and in high school she became a library employee, working there until she graduated. Following graduation from college, she received a letter from the King County (Wash.) Public Library offering to help her earn a master’s degree. She got a degree in library science and later got a degree in business administration with a minor in computer science.

Her first job after high school was in a subscription library, the Pacific Aeronautical Library in Los Angeles. In an interview before her death she had said, “I was the inter-library loan librarian, finding books and articles for the subscribers. That was before I became a homemaker and learned to bake. I opened Marion’s Cake Chalet, specializing in wedding cakes, working out of my home before I opened a shop.” After her marriage ended, she was hit by the computer bug, she said.

She went to work at Hughes Aircraft as a secretary in a data-processing department. “I saw the salaries that the computer programmers were getting and I wondered if I could do that,” she said. So she took computer classes at a community college and studied at her desk during lunch hour. “A programmer saw me one day and told me it was good to learn about computers because eventually all secretaries should learn to use them. I took umbrage at that, because I didn’t plan to be a secretary for the rest of my working life.”

And she didn’t. Later she became a senior manager with a staff of 90 people. Years later she began looking for the town where she would retire. She checked out small towns, including Stayton.

“I was impressed by the library here and found a house that I liked. When I retired a year later, I found the house was still available and I bought it.”

In addition to her library work here, she started the Abigail Scott Duniway chapter of the Daughters of the Revolution. She was also a volunteer working through Chemeketa Community College teaching English to immigrants wanting to become United States citizens.