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Today Sulloway's vast collection--thousands of pieces of music, 78s and theater programs--is housed at UNH. To his surprise, the songs and show tunes he loved so much throughout his life are part of the most actively used collection at the university. "There's a real passion for this music," says manuscripts curator Roland Goodbody '82, who gets requests from all over the world for specific songs. All it takes is a quick online search and an e-mail request, and someone, somewhere, can be enjoying "The Aba Daba Honeymoon" or "Doo-dah Blues." "People are ecstatic when they find something," says Goodbody.

When his wife, Susan, passed away recently, Sulloway himself had to contact Special Collections in search of "The Eagle and Me," a song they had both loved. During her career on Broadway, Susan had performed in a show that included the song, with these lyrics: "Eagle it like to fly./Eagle it got to feel its wings against the sky... We gotta be free--the eagle and me." Years later, at her memorial service, "The Eagle and Me" was, Sulloway thought, the only piece that would do. Fortunately, he knew just where to find it.

LIFE'S WORK
The never-ending business of organizing history

Roland Goodbody '82 is on the move. The manuscripts curator marches up and down the aisles of the Library Storage Building, his compact frame dwarfed by towering metal shelves stacked to the ceiling with boxes. He carries with him two pages of yellow lined paper covered with scribbled text, an original draft of The Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall, one of the country's premier poets.

When Goodbody spies what he's after, he reaches overhead and hauls Box No.14 from the shelf. He slips the draft into its neatly labeled, acid-free folder, snaps the box top shut and wedges Box No. 14 into place. Another treasure in UNH's Special Collections is back where it belongs. Unlike No. 14, most of the boxes here are filled with stacks of unorganized papers straight from the donors.

It will be years before everything is filed in neatly labeled folders. The numbers are staggering: 6,000 pieces of sheet music, thousands of 78s and LPs and 727 cubic feet of political manuscripts still wait to be processed. And then there's Hall's collection: 350 cubic feet of manuscripts, plus 75,000 letters--and this figure does not include the 150,000 letters Goodbody has already organized. "His collection contains correspondence with all the important poets of the last 50 years," says Goodbody. Keeping up with the astonishing amount of paper is a sort of sport, one that demands constant training to stay mentally agile. Do Hall's letters belong in chronological order? Should they be sorted by correspondent? By letters to Hall? Letters from Hall? The decisions are relentless, the task never finished. "It used to keep me up at night," Goodbody admits. "Hall's papers alone would take a lifetime. The best I can do is leave things well organized for the next generation."

Along with an infinite capacity to endure unfinished business, those who work in Special Collections have developed a generosity of spirit about the future and an awareness that the treasures entrusted to them represent individual lives and passions, ideas and dreams. Curators and archivists are keepers of the past, guardians of this gathering place full of shared stories and intersecting lives. Here in Special Collections windows open on other worlds. Ideas are discovered. New stories begin. ~

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