Back in Fall semester of 2004, I was in my final semester as an under-grad at UH-Mānoa.
Also in that semester, I was working as a student librarian at the Marine Option Program.
It was a job offered through a campus Work-Study program, and it paid more than my previous job as a student helper at the Library for the Blind & Physically Handicapped (LBPH).
The Marine Option Program (MOP) was a program for students interested in learning about the oceans. While I didn't take any classes through that program, they needed someone to organize their collection of books, skill reports, brochures, videos and audio materials. Because I had experience working at LBPH (and few other libraries), I got the job.
MOP was moving its offices from the HIG building to Dean Hall, so I had to move a whole bunch of stuff via handtrucks!
That was the same semester in which a flood in Mānoa valley damaged the Hamilton Library. What was less reported was that the flood also did some damage to the portables on Lower Campus that kept a whole bunch of papers for MOP!
There were so much papers, books, whatevers and they weren't even well-organized, nor did it even seem that they were inspected lately. There was even a running joke that we just might find the Declaration of Independence there.
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My boss was Sherwood Maynard, who was the MOP director as well as a biology professor.
He had a sense of humor, but was also serious when the situation demanded it.
He was also a collector, which you could tell when I had to organize a whole bunch of papers, not only at the program headquarters at Dean Hall, but also at the portables on Lower Campus.
Like I said in a previous blog post, be careful what you make fun of, because it just might be you. Well, years later, I had to clean out a whole bunch of papers I collected, because it was started to remind me of all the stuff Mr Maynard collected. Check out http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2012/06/my-war-against-clutter.html
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Well anyways, I wasn't able to finish organizing the collection because I graduated at the end of that semester, and then I was no longer eligible for a student job on campus.
However, I was riding my bike on the UH-Mānoa campus and I saw Yuko (former co-worker at MOP) and she said "Sherwood is at the office". So I went to see him and kept him updated on my life since my under-grad years.
I think that was in 2006.
That would be the last time I ever saw him.
Sherwood Maynard passed away last year on December 5, 2013 due to diabetes. He was 67 years old.
I only found a few weeks ago, while talking to a biology researcher who happened to be married to an LIS professor who taught my cataloging/classification class. We were at the event commemorating the 10th anniversary of the flood that damaged Hamilton Library. So as I was talking to that biology researcher about the semester in which the flood happened, I mentioned about my job at MOP at the time and I asked if he knew Sherwood Maynard. That's when I found out the sad news.
