Melissa Bailey Photo
Hillhouse High Librarian Robert Gibson is retiring at 56 years old. Edna Mrowka, who’s been working at the library since Gibson was just a student, is staying on — at age 92.
Mrowka (pictured), a library assistant at James Hillhouse High School, has been working there for 46 years, through numerous librarians, principals, mayors and presidents.
A lifelong New Havener, Mrowka is now the oldest employee in the city and school district. She has no plans to stop working. To the contrary, she’s sticking to a regimen she developed over the years: Bike 12 miles a day, drink no coffee, and “always like what you’re doing.”
“She’s the fountain of youth,” said Principal Kermit Carolina. “She’s got the formula in her pocket.”
As the decades passed, Mrowka has kept watch over the books in the school’s second-floor library, which is now equipped with computers and electronic scanners. She’s one of the first staffers to show up to Hillhouse in the morning, and will apparently be one of the last to leave.
“I have no intentions of retiring,” she said in an interview Wednesday at the school.
Mrowka is on pace to outlast her boss, Gibson, who’s retiring in June at age 56 from his post one of the school’s two full-time librarians. The other librarian, Mary M. McMullen, will remain after Mr. Gibson retires.
When Gibson first showed up at Hillhouse High as a freshman in 1968, Mrowka was there to greet him at the entrance to the library.
“I spent a lot of time in the library as a student,” he recalled Wednesday. When he graduated in 1972, Mrowka signed his yearbook.
Gibson (pictured) returned four years later to teach history. Over the next 28 years he taught at Hillhouse, he would pop into the library and find Mrowka shelving and reorganizing books. She was there, too, at his wedding and his 50th birthday party.
While teaching, Gibson went back to school to get a library degree. When he returned after several years away as the first African-American male librarian, Mrowka was there to greet him as his new employee.
Her job, processing and reshelving books, “is vital to the smooth operation of the library,” Gibson said.
When he leaves the school in June, Mrowka will be at his retirement party, too.
Mrowka plans to stay on at her job, which pays $34,922 for 10 months’ work.
On Wednesday, she was busy taking out the old cards from books and rearranging the shelves. The cards are the remnants of an old card catalog system, which was replaced 10 years ago with an electronic one. Removing the cards “helps us update the collection in order to add some book titles which may not currently be in our automated catalog and circulation system or weed from the collection any books which may be outdated, damaged or obsolete,” Gibson explained.
At five feet tall and shrinking, she can reach only the bottom four shelves. Student volunteers help her out with the top and bottom shelves.
“I’ve probably worked on every book in here,” she said as she bent over a rolling bookcase.
Between shelving, she recounted how she came to her long-lasting position.
Edna Hessinger was born on March 5, 1919. Her parents, of German descent, were both born in Lithuania. They met in New Haven and married in 1916.
Young Edna didn’t grow up around people who read books. Her mother was one of 14 children in Lithuania, where the girls didn’t learn to read or write.
“My mother never learned to write her name,” Mrowka said. Growing up in Fair Haven, Mrowka had a different set of opportunities. She attended the Eaton Street School, Strong School, and Fair Haven Junior High.
“I always liked books,” she said.
At night her mom would peek in the bedroom and ask, “Are you finished reading?” Edna would squeeze in the last few pages before her mom turned out the light.
Edna was the second oldest of six children, and the only one who finished high school. She graduated from Commercial High School in 1937.
“I wanted to go further,” she said, “but my parents didn’t have any money.”
After marrying a Polish man and giving birth to five kids, Edna Mrowka showed up at Hillhouse High School in 1965 and set to work. A bulletin board in her office at work shows a picture of herself from her first year at the school.
Her husband, a carpenter, didn’t have work year-round, so for 21 years, she took on two jobs. She worked full-time at the school, then left to work a night-shift at Bradlees discount store in Hamden.
On the side, she would check out books, mostly from Hillhouse’s nonfiction collection. At one point, she checked out 42 books on the Holocaust all in a row.
On afternoons, she would pick up her kids from school and bring them back to Hillhouse, where she put them to work alphabetizing catalog cards.
“I told them it would come in handy some day,” she recalled.
Her kids, now grown, have borne her 12 grandkids and 12 great-grandkids.
As the generations follow in her footsteps — one great-grandson was profiled in his local paper for his avid reading — Mrowka has stayed constant.
“I look the same, more or less,” she said. “People say, ‘You don’t talk like you’re 92’; ‘You don’t look like you’re 92.’”
“I have good genes, I guess.”
Mrowka is quick to move around the room — as she was when a six-foot-tall student walked into her office with a piece of paper Wednesday morning. He asked to use the photocopier.
“Do you know how to use it?” Mrowka asked. He shook his head no.
She walked over to the machine, wearing zip-up denim sneakers and a floral white cardigan, and made the copies for him.
Then she shared one secret to her longevity: A rigorous exercise routine. Mrowka said she gets up at 4 a.m. each day, takes an allergy pill and a Tums, then hops on an exercise bicycle. She rides six miles, which takes about 45 minutes. While she pedals, she fills in word search puzzles.
“I don’t like television,” she explained. Plus, the word searches keep your mind sharp.
After breakfast, Mrowka gets in her blue 1961 Buick and drives to school. When she arrives at 6:30 a.m., she’s one of the first people in the school, according to Principal Carolina. She books off at 1:30 p.m.
“I go home, take off my shoes, check my mail, and lie down for maybe an hour.” Then she gets back on the exercise bike for another six miles.
She started riding the bike in 1986, and hasn’t missed a day since, she said.
“I made up my mind I’m going to do it, and I do it,” she explained. “Even if I don’t feel well, I get on the bike.”
Her day ends early at 6:30 p.m., when she goes to sleep in the home she’s lived in since 1942. She moved there with her parents and husband, who have all since passed away. The house sits on Clay Street in Fair Haven. While the neighborhood has changed around her, Mrowka has kept to her business — minding the rose bushes at her house and for the most part, staying inside.
In her spare time, she crochets doilies and scarfs for the teachers at school.
“I keep myself busy, in both my body and my mind,” she said.
Mrowka said the people at Hillhouse are a big part of what keeps her coming back to the school. She pulled out years’ worth of photos and cards from staff thanking her for her kindness.
“I don’t think there’s anybody here who doesn’t like me,” Mrowka reflected. “And if they don’t, it’s not because of me.”
The staff are nice, and “the bosses are fine.” There’s “no stress.”
“That’s the main thing when you’re doing a job,” Mrowka said. “You have to enjoy what you’re doing. That’s the secret. You can’t stay somewhere where you’re bored and miserable.”
You go, Girl!