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The Librarian Was Also a Cop
By Allyson Brehm
Robert Pyle, the
friendly librarian, has a large, snowy beard and a pipe in his
mouth. He has lived in
Northeast
Harbor
since he was 17.
Pencil sketch of Northeast Harbor
Library Director Robert Pyle, done by a Bangor artist, is a
perfect likeness. |
“The minute we came
here we were at home,” he said of his family’s move when he was a
teenager.
“I like best the
people who have been around here for a long time,” said Pyle. “I
respect and admire them.”
On the night of
U.S.
astronaut Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon in 1969, Pyle was a
“rookie summer cop,” he said.
“I saw it as my
duty to walk up and down the street to check the businesses,” he
said. “As Armstrong stepped on the moon, I was the only person
moving in Northeast Harbor.”
The evening was
warm, Pyle said, so all the windows of houses around town were open.
“Walter Cronkite’s
voice permeated the atmosphere,” Pyle said. “I was listening to Neil
Armstrong as though he was just a presence in the air.”
He said he got to
see the landing on television later, but no one else had an
experience like his.
Pyle worked on the
police force for 25 years as a reserve officer. He is now secretary
of the Northeast Harbor Ambulance.
He has been working
at the library for 31 years.
“A librarian/cop is
an interesting combo,” he said with a smile.
He began as
assistant librarian and is now director. He has watched the library
increase in use, physical structure and character, he said.
“There have only
been five Northeast Harbor Library directors since 1892,” said Pyle.
The library serves
three purposes within the community, Pyle explained. It is a private
library for subscribers in season, it is free for townspeople all
year long, and it is the school library for the Mount Desert
Elementary School located across the street.
“In this community
it is almost unique,” he said. “It doesn’t slow down in the winter,
it just changes.”
Pyle is worried
about the possible “Nantucketization” of his hometown.
“The real estate
prices are so high that someone of moderate income can’t afford to
live here,” he said.
The middle income
houses are being converted to summer residences, he said.
Pyle remembers
Northeast
Harbor
when he moved to the village in 1963.
There were about
1,000 people living year round in a village that now has about 500
permanent residents.
Northeast
Harbor
in the 1970s had a physician, dentist, drug store, barbershop, a few
gas stations and three grocery stores, Pyle said.
Now many of the
stores have closed and “the people who live here [year round] are
plundered into the ground in the summer,” he said. They work in what
Pyle calls “the service sector.”
“They are
tradesmen, craftsmen, service providers like me,” he said.
Pyle said there are
families that have been coming seasonally for 100 years and those
that have lived in town for 100 years.
“The families are
beginning to intermarry, which is a given,” he said.
As for the rich and
famous who find solace in Northeast Harbor, Pyle said they come here
“to be able to get their own mail and take out their own trash.
“Part of the big
deal here is that they are not a big deal,” he said. |
