Marjorie Gove has given generously of her creative talents and commitment since the Friends was founded in 1990. Marjorie, a freelance writer with a range of corporate and institutional clients, designed the Friends’ first membership brochure, and has contributed countless newsletter articles and promotional pieces.
Those online and newspaper listings of upcoming book sales? Marjorie sends them out for every sale, drawing shoppers from throughout eastern Massachusetts and beyond.
That membership postcard you got in the mail? That’s Marjorie. For the past several years she has also worn the hat of membership coordinator and mailman, managing the Friends’ membership database and sending out membership renewal postcards.
The book sale banner that appears on the library’s front railing the week of each sale (and disappears again on Sunday afternoon)? Marjorie again, putting up and taking down the library banner and the sign on the Common for each sale.
But that’s not all. As well as serving for four years on the Steering Committee (including three years as Treasurer), Marjorie is the Friends’ publicity coordinator and the force behind many of the print materials that make their way into members’ hands and mailboxes.
In the mid ‘90s, she responded to the Friends’ call for a fund-raising idea by converting her popular “famous friends” design of the membership brochure into a T shirt and taking the project from concept through production in a breathtaking six weeks.
With Fran Weisse, Pat Thomas, Pam Koskovich and Sally McCoubrey, Marjorie has co-organized the Friends’ annual library staff appreciation lunch for many years, developing creative themes ranging from Opening Day and Marathon Monday to Cinco de Mayo, Thanksgiving, and a ‘day at the beach.’
Marjorie’s friends know her for her keen wit and a love of books and wordplay, leading some to believe she was born writing. Close, but not exactly, Born in Melrose, she received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Smith College. She began her writing career there, where she wrote admissions brochures, newsletters, and press releases as Smith’s assistant director of public relations. After writing for a number of years in corporate creative services roles in greater Boston, she bought her house in Natick in 1985 and launched her own business, M-G Creative, three years later. In addition to her volunteer activities with the Friends, Marjorie is also active in other community activities. She has been a Town Meeting member since 2007, and was appointed to the town’s Community Development Advisory Committee in 2009.
To know Marjorie is to also know her love of cats. Among the organizations she supports is the Metrowest Humane Society in Ashland. On Wednesday nights she “mucks in” as a shelter volunteer, cleaning dozens of litter boxes. She also supports the shelter’s wider outreach in a number of ways, including helping place a number of cats in friends’ homes. Having had a total of ten cats as an adult, Marjorie is not only a shelter volunteer, she’s a client, as her current feline companions, Winston and Leonard, will attest.
Somewhere, somehow, she has spare time, when she shares her love of books with her book group and her love of the arts as a Boston Ballet season ticket holder. Play your cards right and she might share with you her famous key lime pie.
Without a fuss, Marjorie steps into the breach. She may shrug and tell you it’s not a big deal. Those of us in the Friends – or behind the circulation desk – know better.