After nearly fifteen years at Fieldston, beloved Tate Library faculty member Tom Carey is retiring.
Carey first joined Fieldston in 2011 as a substitute teacher and later became the International Trips Coordinator in 2014. Though Carey enjoyed spending time in libraries as a child, he never thought he would end up working in one. “I certainly used libraries a lot, they’re one of my favorite places…but I never worked, and I never thought I would work, in a library.”
Despite spending most of his time in the library, Carey is technically not a librarian. “I don’t have a degree in library science or anything like that, but what I do is a little bit of pretty much everything else,” said Carey. Instead, Carey handles the logistics and operations that make the library function. His job includes handling invoices for all supplies, ordering books, dealing with vendors and other operational tasks.
“I open up the library in the morning, and I walk around a lot during A and B bands to tell people to be quiet and not to use their phones,” said Carey. “That’s probably the main thing I’m doing these days, it seems.”
Carey spent his early career in finance, working with the top Fortune 500 companies. “My background is all business development, so that’s sales, marketing, advertising, account relationships. I worked mostly in financial services like MasterCard, JP Morgan Chase, places like that,” he said.
Though working in finance and libraries may seem completely unrelated, Carey believes there are key similarities between his work experiences: “There’s a lot of things in the library that could be related to sales and marketing. You have to know your customer and know who your people are that you’re working with, and that’s certainly very true here in the library. So, I took a lot of those skills professionally and brought them here.”
Before he became a teacher, Carey learned about Fieldston through his wife, Esperanza Caño, who was a teacher in the language department for 36 years. “Even though I’ve been here about 15 years, if you count the substitute teaching years, I really feel like I’ve been here a lot longer because of my wife,” said Carey. “I saw her passion. Even in the summer, she was always doing class planning, always looking at things to bring into her class. So I really felt like a part of this community.”
Managing unruly students in a library is a daunting task, but Carey maintains an optimistic mindset. “There’s times when I get very frustrated,” he said. “I’ll get frustrated when it gets noisy here, and I know people are trying to study, and other people are here just to hang out. That frustrates me, but that’s not a bad moment. That’s just part of teenagers in a library; it’s going to happen.”
Despite the challenges, Carey believes that his experience at Fieldston has been overwhelmingly positive. Some of his favorite memories are times when students ask him for help on projects in his area of expertise. “There are certain subjects that I have a lot of knowledge about. And I’m always very flattered, very happy when teachers send a student to me if they’re doing a project,” shared Carey. “I know about Spain, I know a lot about Spanish history, the Civil War, things like that. Mr. Montera sends kids to me all the time to talk about the Spanish Civil War…I really enjoy those moments.”
Mr. Montera said, “Tom was the perfect person for fledgling historians to interview. He mingled mastery of subject with gentility and gentle guidance. The kids adored him.”
Saskia Sommer (Form VI) remarked, “Mr. Carey made the library such a warm and inviting place. He’d constantly check in as I was doing my work with a smile and anecdote. I’ll sincerely miss his presence on campus.”
Over the summer, Carey plans to travel across Europe with his wife. Upon returning in the fall, he wants to spend more time with the Kingsbridge Historical Society, a local historical group with which Carey has been involved since high school. “I’ve been on their board for the last ten years, and I’m now the director,” said Carey. “We just acquired two years ago this really great historical building right here in the neighborhood. It’s fabulous, but it’s very needy. So I’m going to be doing some grant writing and some programming, and just generally spending a lot of time building that up with the community.”
Thank you, Mr. Carey, for all your hard work and dedication over the past fourteen years. We wish you well!
