The Incredible Babylon Public Library

Being a lifelong journalist, it stands to reason I would spend a considerable amount of time in libraries.

But with the advent of the Internet, it seems to make it less and less necessary to pour through dusty old stacks, scouring the most arcane tomes for tidbits of critical, seemingly forgotten data and answers to questions.

I was leaning heavily toward that philosophy until I wandered into the Babylon Public Library some months ago, searching for answers to some questions, and leaving with answers to one thousand more. To be frank, I am not sure there are many better local libraries in existence. If there are, I've never been to one as friendly, easy to navigate, helpful and loaded with reference materials pertinent to my in-depth quest to find what I need for the book I'm writing.

In the Babylon Public Library - a perfect platform for modern technology mixed with old-school reference data - I found myself immersed in the well-kept collection of old Babylon High School yearbooks. 

Those yearbooks gave me insights to my father I had never known, nor would I ever have known had I not driven five hours from Cape Cod to this cozy seaside village, my father's hometown.

Nestled quietly like a 10-year-old flipping through Treasure Island, I poured through the entire 1960s making personal connections and filling in the blanks at a rapid, hectic pace. My father's pictures were throughout each yearbook - class president, varsity baseball and track star, student council, school plays, clubs, superlatives. I was blown away.

I knew practically none of it, and yet here I was on a rainy afternoon, sitting comfortably in this pristine example of what a public library should be as it filled my mind and my heart with an ever-increasing portrait of what my dad's life must have been like.

It's an interesting dichotomy or some might even say, irony, I must confess, because my dad is very alive and well, yet I've never known too much about him. He lives right down the street from me. But he's never been one to blab or spin yarns of his glory days liike many of us are wont to do; he's always been someone who lives for right now, not for the fond recollections of yesteryear.

My search was not for information about my father, nor is he the subject of my book, but what the Babylon Public Library provided me with was an instant, tangible link to so much more than just what I was looking for in that particular moment. I happened upon these warm, gripping details of my father's life as a teenager and young man growing up in his hometown of Babylon, New York, and I found myself immersed within each detail, magnetized by them.

My father made an enormous, life-changing decision at age 18, perhaps influenced to do so before he was fully ready to emotionally tackle being thrust from being class president and baseball star one day, straight into adulthood. But this is all I've ever really known. I've never felt comfortable pressing him about the details, but here in this tiny nook of the universe were my answers, waiting for me, helping me refine one aspect of my book by opening windows to another.

Being dichotomously slammed with joy and then brought down to earth by self-realization, was humbling to say the least. For in that library what I unearthed was more than just the simple knowledge that my father, Bill Walsh, had "grown up" in Babylon and that he went to Babylon High School and was a "Panther" through-and-through - it was a reaffirmation of what deep down I have always known: that his sacrifices to leave his beloved hometown to marry my mother and start a family were as honorable a deed as any of his forefathers in any number of battles and wars and heroic deeds.

He left behind a legacy of success and it could not have been easy to do. He left behind scores of relatives and his Lincoln Street home and he followed his heart just as much as any human being with any dream to fulfill would do.

But he did it for me and at the moment I gently tucked back into the shelf the thin 1967 Babylon High School yearbook I could not have been more proud to be his son.