LIBRARY TRUSTEE:
William J. Dean
William J. Dean has been a Trustee of the New York Society Library since 1988.
BIOGRAPHY:
2006 marked the retirement of Bill Dean after twelve years of service as chairman of our Board. He saw the Library through a quiet but dramatic period of change and development. Under his chairmanship, the Library Library Notes, launched our involvement in Project Cicero (which has delivered hundreds of thousands of books to public school classrooms), and celebrated our 250th anniversary. Bill did all this with consistent equanimity and good cheer.
Bill is a man of many parts. He is a lover of Chekhov and Montaigne and virtually an honorary citizen of the Republic of Venice. A devote of opera, he has seen both sides of the footlights at the Met, having served as a supernumerary in Aida. He continues to write a delightful column in the Christian Science Monitor, often recounting scenes of his wide-ranging walks in our great city. He is also a lawyer who brings respect and appreciation to that profession I share with him. A longtime director of Volunteers of Legal Service, he coordinates the provision of pro bono legal services throughout the city and serves as a conscience for New York's legal community. He is also a living embodiment of the tenet "mens sana in corpore sano" and still excels in frequent basketball games at the East Side Settlement House.
But perhaps most important and meaningful for me personally, Bill has set a tone and example for all of us who are involved with the Library. His indomitable good cheer has kept the Board's interactions on a positive footing and made Board service a pleasure and privilege for us all. Firm and decisive when the occasion demands, he has always maintained a clear sense of the Library's mission. He never let us forget the importance of what Emily Dickinson, in a letter to her friend Joseph Lyman, called "the dearest ones of time, the strongest friends of the soul - books." In the marvelous 250th anniversary book edited by Jenny Lawrence and Bill's predecessor, Henry Cooper, Bill wrote a beautifully expressed appreciation of his favorite author, Chekhov, in words that could be equally applied to Bill himself: "He understands how difficult life is for most people. He is generous in portraying those who strive to live a better life, even when they may fail. He is modest. He never condemns. He is tender towards those who suffer." I greatly value the example Bill Dean has set, and as his successor I hope to apply that example in leading the Library.
(Charles Berry, Annual Report)
BOOKS:
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