NCSU Libraries Focus Online
Volume 21 number 1 - Fall 2000
Friends of the Library News: Calvin Trillin Entertains at a Sellout Spring
Dinner
By Mary Kate Keith, Friends of the Library
American humorist Calvin Trillin was the special guest speaker at the Friends
of the Library's annual Spring Dinner on May 3, 2000. Trillin, a journalist
and syndicated columnist, is best known for his columns in the New Yorker,
where he has been a staff writer since 1963. He also writes for Nation and Time magazines.
Friends' Author-in-Residence Kaye Gibbons introduced Doug Marlette, a Pulitzer-Prize
winning editorial cartoonist, to the crowd of more than 250 guests. Marlette,
author of the comic strip " Kudzu," extended a warm welcome to
his long-time friend, Trillin.
Trillin described the evolution of his writing career and how he came to be
a poet, claiming his poetry career was first inspired by John Sununu, chief
of staff for the Bush administration, for whom he wrote his first poem, "
If You Knew What Sununu." Politicians and current events became the
main subjects of Trillin's poetic musings, which offered a clever and very
funny way of looking at people and situations. Trillin also entertained the
audience with anecdotes from his recent book of short stories, Family Man.
Franklin Hart, president of the Friends of the Library Board of Directors,
presided over the business portion of the dinner, and Chancellor Marye Anne
Fox brought greetings from the university. Linda G. Murphy, past president
and chair of the Nominating Committee for the Friends, conducted the election
of new members to the board. Robert Bashford, Maryann Bitzer, Suzanne Purrington,
Emma Garnett Satterfield, John Stewart, and Brenda Wilson were elected for
five-year terms. Murphy was reelected to a five-year term, and Wyndham Robertson
was elected vice president/president-elect. Hart thanked out-going board members
Robert Beasley, Audrey Kates Bailey, and Arthur Cooper for their years of service.
Susan K. Nutter, vice provost and director of Libraries, announced the establishment
of ten new endowments and eleven new incubator endowments. Nutter also inducted
thirteen new Friends of the Library life members.
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