Oct 18, 2007 8:33 PM
Once upon a time there was a school librarian named Judith Dahill who loved her job so much she would just throw on some comfy clothes in the morning, rush out the door, and work from morning till evening among leaning towers of beloved books in an old library painted yuck peach.
Then one day, “Jones New York In The Classroom” came along and told her she had just won a $30,000 makeover for herself and her library at Manhattan’s HS of Fashion Industries.
Sixty students had nominated her for the third annual Back to School, Back to Style Contest: “She deserves a makeover because she works very hard, hardly ever takes lunch, comes in early and leaves late, late, late.” “She is a teacher I can go to and talk to.” “She spends her day constantly helping students with their projects and finding the right book for them.”
“You can’t call me Mrs. Dahill anymore!” the librarian cried when she heard of her good fortune. “You must call me Cinderella!”
On the morning of Oct. 2 a car and driver whisked her away from school. While she was at a hair salon, a make-up session and selecting $2,000 worth of elegant, flattering clothes with a personal shopper (“Red’s my favorite color,” she’d earlier confessed to her fairy godmother), more than 200 volunteers got busy scraping, painting, cleaning polishing, re-arranging, sign-painting, flower-potting and oohing and ahhing.
“I had fun walking down the street with a photographer following me, but no one even looked, because this is New York,” Dahill said.
In the afternoon, to the pop of flashbulbs, the applause of admirers, the scratching of reporters’ pens and the cheers of teenagers, a car stopped in front of the school and a chic woman in a butter-soft red leather jacket, black scarf and charcoal trousers set her elegantly shod foot on the curb.
“Oh, wow, like you don’t look like a librarian anymore!” one boy shouted.
“I always loved coming to work; now I love it more,” Dahill said. “The library is packed with students; they love it, they want to come. All those volunteers who committed that time and effort to help our school, what a rush! They applauded me, but it’s me who applauds them, and Jones New York, Scholastic, New York Cares, Lowe’s and Macy’s and Valspar Paints. All teachers should get this! Not just little librarian me. And thanks to the kids who nominated me. You rock!”
“Can I like, have a date?” shouted another.
After speaking in the auditorium to a cheering crowd, Cinderella was escorted to her new palace:
A library painted a deep rich red that looked like the reading room in an English manor. Potted ferns, wall mirrors, sparkling windows, perfectly ordered bookstacks, brass floor lamps, gleaming woodwork, gleaming dark wooden tables appointed with clear glass bowls of apples, and 12 boxes of beautiful new books.
And that wasn’t all. Dahill’s office, the small reading room, the reading terrace and the teachers’ lounge and kitchen were also transformed.
And what about Dahill’s personal makeover? Will she, or won’t she, keep up the hair-and-make-up routine?
“I’ve been saying to my husband in the morning, ‘You take the kids to school, I have to put on my make-up.’ I wonder how long that’ll last?”