Desloge librarian announces retirement
DESLOGE – Desloge City Librarian Regina Hahn announced that she is retiring effective Jan. 22 at the Desloge Library Board meeting Tuesday. Hahn has served as the city’s librarian for 25 years.
“I’ve put my 25 years in and it’s time to retire,” said Hahn. “There are some personnel use issues with the city that has made me retire sooner than what I might have. I told the library board this past September that I had planned to retire this year. This time this is my retirement for sure. I am going to enjoy life.”
Hahn has lived in Desloge for 35 years. Hahn started working at the library as a library aide under Marie Edgar. After two years as an aide, Hahn became library director for three years. Hahn then stopped working for two years while her daughter was in high school. After a two year hiatus, she returned as librarian, a post she has served for 20 years.
“We were aware that she was planning on retiring,” said Desloge City Administrator Eric Wiederhold. “She has talked about it the past couple of years and more specifically in public she mentioned it at a library board meeting this past fall. Regina Hahn has done a good service for the city and her dedication to her job will certainly be missed.”
Wiederhold said the city knew Hahn’s retirement had been pending and one of the things that the city had thought about was reorganizing the library and making it part of a leisure, parks and recreation department in which they could bring in full-time staff.
“That’s certainly going to be one of the considerations that we are now going to have to put to the board,” said Wiederhold. “The benefit to that is we could have a full-time staff opposed to a part-time staff. Also, with this full-time staff we could address our concerns regarding parks and recreation as well as library. That’s one of the considerations that’s going be brought into the discussion regarding the librarian.”
Wiederhold said that one of the existing part-time workers in the library will serve as an interim librarian until a new librarian is hired.
