It Was Just a Library Card
(Originally written April 15, 2015; updated Aug. 7, 2025.)
“Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark.” – Germaine Greer
By DAVE BERRY
It was just a library card, but it meant the world to me.
I have always loved books. It goes back to the little paperback collection I started during grade school. My holdings eventually filled all five shelves of the hickory bookcase I made in junior high shop class.
My prized book was “Brave Men” by Ernie Pyle, and I still have my original copy. I’ve read it several times, and I always linger on the Mountain Fighting chapter and Ernie’s description of the night the Italian muleskinners brought Captain Waskow’s body down from the mountain. Powerful writing.
But I digress. Yes, I love books, but until now I have had little time to read the books I love. A great thing about retirement is being free to make time to read. I’m into my eighth book in three months, but we’ll talk about those another time. This isn’t about what I’ve read; it’s about where I’ve read.
If you’ve taken the Library of Congress tour, you know it’s a wonderful place – the world’s “largest repository of knowledge” with a collection of 150 million items. Three buildings make up the Library of Congress; I’m referring to the Thomas Jefferson Building, directly across from the Capitol Building.
Entering the ornate Main Hall, you are struck by its Italian Renaissance-style glory. There is simply too much to take in as you gawk at the soaring ceilings, marble floors, columns and statuary occupying every available space.
My wife was in Washington to work, having accepted a scholar’s grant to study Native American beadwork at the Smithsonian Institution. I was the fortunate recipient of an unscheduled two weeks to explore the nation’s capital.
Before her study commitment commenced, we had a few days to ride the train downtown, tour the White House and Capitol and take in the museums and monuments. We were finishing up with the Library of Congress and took a tour to help orient us. But I disliked being herded and wanted to linger. We saw the Gutenberg Bible, the Giant Bible of Mainz, murals illustrating the evolution of the written word, murals illustrating Good and Bad Government and a mosaic of Minerva, goddess of universal knowledge, who guarded the Main Reading Room.
At an overlook above the reading room, I was awestruck. Directing our attention to the domed ceiling towering 160 feet above, the docent pointed out the “circular mural at the apex of the dome” and twelve figures the tour guide said, “represent the countries, cultures and eras that contribute to the development of Western civilization as understood in 1897.”
Everyone was looking up and around. I was looking down… at three orderly rings of oak desks lit by lamps with green glass shades. Thick Plexiglas at the overlook separated us from the knowledge below, and it rankled me. People on the floor seemed to be doing what people do in libraries… reading, studying, taking notes, exploring mounds of books and exploring the stacks. I wanted to be down there.
The next day, I set out on my quest to research one of my wife’s ancestors, a Michigan lieutenant who died in the Civil War. At the National Archives, I thumbed through hundreds of pay and medical records from the Seventh Michigan Infantry and soon knew much more about my Michigan soldier … when, where and how he enlisted, where he fought, why he was promoted, where he was wounded, the severity of his wounds … and where he died.
Tomorrow, I determined, I would gain entry to the Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress. I expected it to be difficult; it wasn’t. All I needed was a library card, and that was free. Just apply, fill out some paperwork, get a picture taken and wait for it to be laminated. That done, you can march to the Jefferson Building’s back door and enter directly into the Main Reading Room.
In my personal cubicle, just off the circular main desk in the middle at the right edge of the walkway to the stacks, I spread out my research under my green lampshade and went to work. When I was there 15 (now 25) years ago, the main stacks were open to the public. Today, the stacks are closed, the green lampshades are gone, you order what you want online from a terminal at your desk and attendants must retrieve it. I think I liked it better the old way.
Through my fumbling research and forays into the stacks, I found a treasure. I retrieved a sheaf of original newspapers from 1864, the Armory Square Hospital Gazette. That hospital, one of 25 in and around Washington toward the end of the war, had been located on the Washington Mall less than a mile from where I sat. Its Ward K was reserved for the worst cases, the mortally wounded who would not survive. The poet Walt Whitman spent days in Ward K tending wounded soldiers (and Mary Todd Lincoln would often slip in after dark to sit at their bedsides.)
I had chased my soldier, the lieutenant from Michigan, through a dozen libraries all the way to Washington. I found him in the Sept. 10, 1864, edition of the Gazette, on a brittle inside page listing those who had died in the past two weeks. At the top of 21 names was his death notice: “Harty S. Felt, 2nd Lt C 7 Mich.”
(Further digging led me to an earlier edition of the paper, and on Page 2, amid political announcements and a story about the court-martial of a former surgeon general charged with defrauding the government through elicit contracts for medical supplies, I found Harty’s death notice. Headlined “Lieut. Harty S. Felt,” it read: “Among the deaths this week will be noticed the death of this young hero of the Seventh Michigan. He met his death not only with heroic fortitude, but with Chistian faith and triumph.” From those mentions, I was able to trace the date of his burial and locate his grave at the new Arlington burial ground. You can read about that in another column, “The Empty Grave in Mrs. Lee’s Garden.”)
Using my newly acquired Library of Congress Copy Card, I gained access to the copier and laid the large brittle sheets gently across the glass. I got my copy and that was enough for me. My quest was complete.
I left the library smiling, clutching my library card, protecting my small stack of notes and photocopies that backed up my research breakthrough.
As I double-timed down the Mall to pick up Marti at the Smithsonian, I said a quiet thank you to Minerva, goddess of universal knowledge. My mind was full, thinking of books, newspapers, language and the glory of libraries.
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Dave Berry is former editor of the Tyler Morning Telegraph. His Focal Point column ran for several years before his retirement from newspapering. This one appeared April 15, 2015. The library card, copy card and National Archives cards pictured above are now 25 years old. I hope to use them again some day.