Sometimes-blue-haired librarian says good-bye

Published 2:17 pm Friday, April 4, 2008

Pattie Holt isn’t just the librarian at Gateway Middle School. She’s a matchmaker of sorts.

“I know most of the kids and their personalities,” she said. “You can tell by what kind of books they like.”

When she sees a match, or notices a student struggling to make friends, she’ll tip them off that there’s someone else who likes the books they do.

For example, a seventh-grader who was new to the school came to the library looking for a book and said he was interested in baseball.

“I asked: ‘A story about baseball or baseball facts?’” Holt said.

The student wanted a story, so Holt suggested “Heat” by Mike Lupica, and passed on the name of another boy who’d read it.

When Holt retires this spring after 24 years in the Everett School District and 31 years in education, it’s those kinds of moments she’ll miss, she said.

As an Army child, Holt moved around a lot, and was always trying to adjust at new schools. She read prolifically, sometimes with a flashlight under the covers when it was late.

“I remember middle school. It was hard,” Holt said. “It’s just not a good time for most kids. If I can help kids feel connected…”

Some students don’t feel comfortable eating in the lunchroom, so they spend lunch in the library. Holt tries to connect them with other students, but lightly.

“You have to give middle-schoolers space,” she said.

At Gateway, Holt is also the head track coach, which seems to bridge a perceived gap for students between books and sports. Sometimes the shy kids who spend lunch in the library with her come out for track because she’s the coach, she said.

“They say, ‘If she can do it, I can do it,’” Holt said.

Holt also coaches intramural sports, is the adviser for the school newspaper, teaches lessons on library research and helps run an after-school detention program – in addition to managing the library.

Blonde, trim and energetic, she doesn’t fit the stereotype of the blue-haired librarian frowning through her bifocals.

However, her hair is blue at times. She puts blue gel in it and spikes it out like a porcupine when her track students take first place at the district championship. The school’s colors are blue and gray.

She’s also adventurous: In 2004, she traveled to South Africa to help start a library in a school in a Zulu village.

Holt also enjoys skateboarding around her Renton neighborhood with her 13-year-old stepson Thomas. It’s OK to be seen with her because his peers don’t live in that neighborhood, and besides, he wants to be a librarian when he grows up, Holt said.

Holt moved to Renton from a house that was five minutes from school in August 2006 after she got remarried. She’d been divorced, with two grown children, when she met her husband, Steve Holt, on the dating Web site match.com.

“I was honest,” she said of her online profile. “My screen name was ‘Teacher Patty’ and I put up my school picture.”

Holt said she’s not looking forward to retirement because she’s enjoyed working at Gateway so much. The school is one of those rare large schools that offers a feeling of community, she said.

“Gateway is an ideal school – I love it,” she said. “I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it, but it’s time.”

Holt hopes that after retirement she can keep teaching, maybe with a private school.

“Certainly new adventures await,” she said.