TT: Frederick W. Huff, R.I.P.

I suspect that just about everyone who grows up to be an egghead meets at some crucial point in his youth an older person who makes him feel as though it’s all right to take an interest in intellectual pursuits. For me, that person was Frederick W. Huff, the librarian of the high school in the small Missouri town where I grew up. He was, like most of the librarians I’ve known well, something of an eccentric, a violin-playing opera buff with a stately air and a deep, plummy voice who never met a polysyllable he didn’t like. Why he chose a place like Smalltown, U.S.A., in which to start a family and build a library was never clear to me, but it was my great good fortune that he did so.
Mr. Huff–I never called him “Fred” to his face, not even after I grew up–put together a richly varied collection of books and records that fed my curiosity for four blissful years. He also gave me my first summer job, and I never ceased to marvel at the just-so precision with which he regulated each and every aspect of his professional life. Above all, he took my dreams seriously, and long after I graduated from high school and started making my way in the world, I made a point of stopping by his office from time to time to tell him of my latest adventures and find out what was new in his life. He was, I knew, proud of my work as a writer, and I was prouder still to have lived up to his great expectations. Alas, the protracted illness that finally caught up with Mr. Huff this morning left him incapable of appreciating the success of The Letter. How he would have loved hearing the backstage gossip–and how I would have loved to tell him all about it!
The small towns of America are full of men and women like Fred Huff. Rarely do they make headlines, but their devotion changes countless lives for the better. He changed mine, and I will always revere his memory.