COOK — In the new meeting room at the Cook Public Library, stacks of empty moving boxes still line the walls, remnants of the long process of moving thousands of books out of the flood-damaged building to storage and then back again after months at a temporary home inside Trinity Lutheran Church.
Nearby, another table is piled with books culled from the collection for the Friends of the Cook Public Library book sale set for June 12.
For Crystal Whitney, the library’s director and this year’s Timber Days grand marshal, the quiet backroom setting for Monday’s interview with the Timberjay felt strangely appropriate.
After all, Whitney once specifically asked to avoid dealing with the public when she first volunteered at the library more than a decade ago.
“I didn’t want to be the public face,” Whitney said with a laugh. “I just wanted to be in the back doing work.”
Over the past two years, Whitney has become the very visible public face of the library’s recovery effort following the devastating June 2024 flood, helping guide the institution through months of uncertainty before reopening this spring in its renovated home.
The public-facing role Whitney now occupies stands in sharp contrast to the quiet, research-loving child she once was.
Whitney grew up near her grandparents’ dairy farm in the small southern Minnesota town of Delavan, near Mankato. Her father worked as an electrician while also helping on the farm, while her mother was first a stay-at-home mom before later working as a dietary aide. Whitney and her younger brother, Luke, spent much of their childhood close to their grandparents and great-grandparents.
“My grandparents were just an integral part of my whole childhood and actually even into adulthood,” Whitney said.
Books and reading were woven into everyday life in the family. Whitney remembers a massive bookshelf filled with encyclopedias at home and recalls spending hours doing research projects “just for fun.” Reading was common throughout the family, from her grandparents to her great-grandparents.
But Whitney also remembers being drawn to the school library in Delavan, where the elementary and high school students all shared the same building.
“I didn’t know I was supposed to be a librarian for a really long time,” she said. “I always thought I was going to be a journalist. But when I think back, that school library was so important.”
Whitney especially remembers eyeing the high school section of the library as a younger student, fascinated by books about the Loch Ness Monster and the Gabor sisters, inspired in part by her love of Ava Gabor on the television sitcom “Green Acres.”
“That high school section was always that, ‘Oh, someday I’m gonna get there,’” Whitney said.
When Whitney’s family later moved to Mapleton, the library thread continued there as well. Her best friend’s mother served as the school librarian, and Whitney and her friend volunteered in the library during high school.
Whitney increasingly saw journalism as her future.
“I did journalism as a class in high school and loved it,” Whitney said. “I think that’s what I always thought I was going to be.”
Instead, her path wound in different directions before circling back toward libraries.
Whitney graduated from Maple River High School in 1995, attended Mesabi Range College, married in 1999 and settled in Cook with her husband, Larry Phillips, a longtime local auto salesman and co-owner of Phillips Chevrolet.
The couple raised their son, Grant, while Whitney spent years away from school before eventually deciding to complete a bachelor’s degree after the death of her grandmother in 2008.
“She never got to go to college,” Whitney said. “It was like her hope that I would because she thought that that is what I needed to do.”
Whitney completed online degrees through North Dakota State University, earning a sociology degree with minors in journalism and women and gender studies, then later earned her master’s degree in library and information science from Kent State University.
The work required enormous self discipline while raising a family and juggling multiple jobs.
“You have to have so much self discipline,” Whitney said. “I would have to chunk out my days and, okay, nobody will come in this room because I have this much I have to get done.”
Her entry into the Cook Public Library came almost accidentally through a required service-learning project in 2012. Whitney initially hoped to volunteer at the Virginia library, but when that didn’t work out, newly hired Cook library director Steve Harsin suggested she might help locally instead.
Whitney’s first assignment was weeding books from the collection.
She quickly discovered Harsin saw more potential in her than she initially saw in herself.
“He just gently nudged me to do a little bit more with the public,” Whitney said.
That gradual shift eventually transformed Whitney’s understanding of what a rural public library could be.
While books remain central, Whitney said the modern library increasingly serves as a gathering place and support system for people who may otherwise lack regular social interaction.
“We have people, I know for a fact, we’re one of the few faces that they see during the week,” Whitney said.
Whitney credits longtime library assistant Margaret Jarka as another major reason the library successfully navigated years of challenges that included COVID, the flood, and the eventual rebuilding effort.
“We just built this together,” Whitney said.
The two worked side-by-side for years, developing such a close working relationship that, Whitney said, “we don’t even have to talk. I would be nothing without Margaret.”
Together, they helped transform the library from what Whitney first encountered as a volunteer in 2012 into something much larger and more community-centered.
“It’s just not even the same thing as when I walked in in 2012 as a volunteer,” Whitney said. “It’s a completely different place.”
Their partnership also became deeply personal over time.
Whitney’s husband, Larry, died in 2016 after being diagnosed with leukemia shortly after Whitney completed graduate school.
“When my husband passed away, Margaret was here,” Whitney said.
Whitney said Jarka’s support remains one of the reasons she stayed committed to both the library and the work of rebuilding after the flood.
“Margaret is an important reason about why I’m still here, still trying to bring back all those things Margaret and I started,” Whitney said.
Even now, Whitney still lights up most when discussing books, libraries and research. In 2023, she traveled to England through library studies coursework, visiting Oxford’s Bodleian Library, an experience she still speaks about with reverence.
“I could sit there,” she said. “I could sit in the Bodleian. It’s so old, and the fact that we still do libraries today is so cool. I loved it.”
Whitney continues to gravitate strongly toward nonfiction reading, currently working through the library’s reading challenge with books tied to different states, including one about Warren Buffett alongside books about presidents and first ladies. At home, much of that reading takes place alongside her cat, Milford.
For all her love of quiet spaces, books and research, Whitney said she also understands the importance of occasionally stepping into public roles, even if reluctantly.
At one point in the interview, Whitney referenced Queen Elizabeth as someone she admired for her composure and sense of duty, an unlikely but somehow fitting point of inspiration for a small-town librarian preparing to ride through Cook as Timber Days grand marshal.
“I would rather just be the library director and not talk about me at all,” Whitney said.
Still, Whitney said the community’s support during the flood recovery left her feeling she should accept the honor.
“The people, the community have been so wonderful during all of this and supportive,” Whitney said. “And so I will lead the parade.”
And then she smiled.
“And I do think Margaret is driving the convertible.”