Life After The Library

LIFE AFTER THE LIBRARY

Ramon Hernandez makes a new life as pastor after 11 years as director of AAPL

BY DON FABER Community Affairs Editor

For 11 years, Ramon Hernandez served as director of one of the region’s greatest resources -the Ann Arbor Public Library.

His accomplishments during that time include a huge building expansion, computerization, increased hours, the enlargement of two branches and a substantial increase in materials budget.

For all that, Ray Hernandez took early retirement last year to embrace “a new world and a new life,” as he calls it.

Hernandez, 59, is now the fulltime pastor at the Community Congregational Church, United Church of Christ in Pinckney.

Community, the oldest church in Pinckney, will celebrate its ses-quicentennial in 1998.

The name - Community - is all. It defines the Pinckney and Gregory area as the place to meet and to renew friendships.

The church plays host to Alcoholics Anonymous, TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) and the Girl Scouts. Seniors use the facility rent-free.

Hernandez’s flock numbers about 230; average Sunday attendance is 140. A choir that fluctuates (doesn’t every church choir fluctuate?) between 12 and 20 members complements the spoken word.

Hernandez comes by his “new” calling honestly. Before he logged 24 productive years in public library administration, he served 10 years in the clergy of the United Church of Christ.

From 1960-64, Hernandez served as pastor of a church in Merrill, Wisc, before moving on to become state director of youth work for the UCC in Madison.

So when he left the AAPL last year to become part-time pastor at the Pinckney church, the transition to a new career had been paved by prior service.

“You can take the boy out of the church, but you can’t take the church out of the boy,” Hernandez laughs.

Even so, Hernandez went from a budget of $5 million and a staff of 150 (at the AAPL) to a budget of $125,000 and a paid staff of 2 and one-half persons.

Asked what he misses most about his former life, Hernandez says the “alert, stimulating and interesting people” who made up the staff of the library, the Advisory Committee and the Friends of the Library.

He also misses the business and professional scene of downtown Ann Arbor.

As well he should, because Hernandez was a highly visible figure. He served as program chair and president of the downtown Rotary Club, and sang with the Choral Union of the University Musical Society.

But all that is not to suggest life in Pinckney is devoid of “alert, stimulating and interesting people.”

His is a “remarkable congregation,” according to Hernandez. “The people of Community Church,” he says, “have inspired and ennobled me with the depth of their caregiving. They have lifted me to a higher plane.”

He cites working with his church’s Stephen Ministry, a program that uses dedicated lay persons to provide Christian care to those in different kinds of need, as among his most rewarding experiences.

In addition, “the number of people in Pinckney who have significant challenges in their personal lives who are not only coping but have found inner resources to deal constructively with their lives would inspire anybody,” Hernandez says.

His goals at the church include maintaining basic pastoral services and church programming, and “building it institutionally” in both members and budget “to sustain a strong program into the 21st century.”

Hernandez wryly notes that he’s smart enough to leave alone those programs that have done well.

So is there life after the Ann Arbor Public Library? With Ray Hernandez, you don’t even need to ask.

Hernandez was unanimously called to the church by the congregation last July after several months of part-time duty.

“We’d been living together,” he quips, “then we decided to get married.”

Photo: Ramon Hernandez, recently retired director of the Ann Arbor Public Library, now serves as fulltime pastor of the Community Congregational Church, United Church of Christ in Pinckney. The historic church will be 150 years old in 1998.