Tom Owen; ‘Walking Encyclopedia’ at Central Library

“Tom Owen of the History Department of the Los Angeles Public Library must never die, for he retains even more material in his head than in his excellent files.”

--Guide to Architecture in Los Angeles, 1977, by David Gebhard and Robert Winter

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Neither authors, nor researchers nor schoolchildren desperate for information to add to a term paper, however, can decree the span of life. Tom Owen, a library assistant--never officially a librarian--died April 4 in Kaiser Foundation Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 65.

Owen’s longtime supervisor, Sheila Nash, said he died of an infection that began in his ankle, leading to amputation of his right leg below the knee but then spreading to his lungs. She said he was working in the Rare Books Room in the downtown library one Saturday four weeks before his death and asked to leave early so that he could go to the hospital emergency room to check on a swollen ankle. He had been in intensive care ever since.

A fixture and a treasured resource at the city’s venerable Central Library since Oct. 21, 1957, Owen amused colleagues by constantly reinventing his supposed birth date (actually Dec. 31, 1934), once offering a date three years after he began his tenure of more than 40 years at the library.

Owen was an eccentric and proud of it. He sported a long gray ponytail to the end of his days, and dressed informally in open-necked sports shirts, pants and ubiquitous blue deck shoes that were usually in shreds. His seemingly inlaid accessory was his library identification badge on a cord around his neck, and his smile could light up the gloomiest corner of the architectural landmark, despite a few gaps in his teeth.

One colleague recalled a favorite anecdote when “Mr. Owen,” as some research proteges always called him, explained an absence from work. The excuse was that a skunk had sprayed his clothes hanging on the line, and he feared offending co-workers if he reported wearing the odoriferous garments.

Owen’s tattered shoes bespoke his choice method of transportation--he walked. For many years, he walked more than 10 miles round trip from his Hollywood apartment to the downtown library. Co-workers said he never owned a car, never drove one, never asked for a ride. But when the oft-maligned Red Line opened its subway stop at Hollywood and Vine last summer, the historian--by then suffering congestive heart failure--embraced it as a modern addition to his lifestyle.

“Isn’t this great?!” he said enthusiastically one day as he descended into the underground cavern decorated with film reels and encountered an acquaintance on his way to work. “I can get off just a block from the library!”

Owen labored happily in the library’s History, Art and Rare Books departments, and manned his assigned shifts on the hectic information desk, fielding telephone inquiries, validating parking tickets and directing lost visitors to various nooks and crannies of the vast library. Wherever he was stationed, he provided quick and thorough answers to questions from lofty scholars, intense authors, ignorant newspaper reporters or bored schoolchildren with equal attention, kindness and sheer delight in sharing some tidbit of knowledge.

“He was the indispensable man, the un-supervisable wonder, the self-deprecating walking encyclopedia of Los Angeles history,” said librarian Glen Creason, who worked with Owen for more than 20 years, primarily in the History Department. “The order of inquiry in my searches went: check the files, check the books, check with Tom.”

An official Central Library commendation given Owen when he was working in history praised him as “an unofficial expert consultant in local history” and thanked him for helping to build the library’s trove of historic photographs.

Colleagues remembered Owen sitting at his ancient Underwood typewriter before the library was air-conditioned, meticulously typing information on index cards for the California File. That card file of historic tidbits about people, places, businesses and buildings, particularly useful to genealogy researchers, will stand, along with his other library contributions, as Owen’s legacy.

Particularly knowledgeable about architecture, Owen was an enthusiastic member and expert with the Los Angeles Conservancy, which formed during the preservationist battle to maintain the original 1926 Central Library.

On a personal quest for 40 years to unearth details about Los Angeles’ early movie palaces, Owen worked with the conservancy in its efforts to preserve the now-tarnished Broadway theater district. In 1985, the organization awarded Owen its Preservation Award for his “invaluable contribution to architectural and historic research on Los Angeles.”

Owen was also considered a “tremendous resource” by members of the Los Angeles Westerners Corral, a group of history buffs who publish articles about the West and a newsletter called the Branding Iron.

Architectural biographer Karen Hudson described her research efforts for The Times in 1993: “I was lucky enough to find Tom Owen, an extremely knowledgeable librarian, who led me to all the material and later helped me reconstruct a bibliography when my computer and disks were stolen. . . . Where will the future Tom Owenses come from?”

When one of the fans of Steve Harvey’s Only in L.A. column in The Times wondered about the meaning of the Latin inscription carved on the Central Library, “Et Quasi Cursores Vitai Lampada Tradunt,” Harvey immediately called Owen. Putting his hand on just the right book, published in 1926 when the Central Library opened, Owen translated in time for Harvey’s deadline: “Like Runners Passing on the Lamp of Light.”

Many questioners from across the country, impressed by Owen’s encyclopedic grasp of places Californian, automatically addressed him as “the director of Central Library.” Far from it. He was never an administrator and wasn’t even a librarian.

True, he had a lifelong fascination with books and libraries as well as history, but he never bothered to get his master’s of library science degree and always referred to himself as a “humble clerk.” His passion was history, and neither official titles nor the extra pay that went with a library degree attracted him.

Owen’s actual designation at Central Library was “clerk-typist” from 1957 to 1978, when he was promoted to “library assistant.”

A native of Pasadena, he started working in his school library when he was at Marshall Junior High. He was an 85-cents-an-hour clerk in the college library while studying English and history at Pasadena City College, and upped his earnings to 95 cents an hour at the University of Redlands library when he continued his studies there.

During his tenure at the then four-year Pasadena City College, Owen also worked as a page at the Huntington Library, where he met his mentor and longtime friend, researcher Edwin H. Carpenter Jr., who died in 1995.

Their enduring friendship would provide another legacy for historians. After two arson fires devastated the Central Library collections in 1986, Nick Curry said Owen and Carpenter spent countless off-duty hours replicating Huntington materials to fill in gaps seared in the city library shelves.

“Tom is going to be a horrendous loss because there is just no replacement,” said Curry, a researcher for biographers and an active member of the Westerners. “He was the best.”

Owen is survived by a sister, Mary Jean Coffin, of Whittier, and a half-sister, Billie Lou Heinrich, of Santa Monica.

A memorial service is pending.