The Brinkley Family Memorial Lecture Series
Catherine Lee Brinkley
Catherine MacDonald Lee “Kate” Brinkley was born in Norfolk in the Sarah Leigh Hospital on Mowbray Arch 27 September 1930. Though raised mostly in Auburn, Alabama, she graduated from the St. Catherine’s School in Richmond and from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College with a Bachelor of Arts in History and Art History. She married Norfolk native Stanworth Brinkley in 1957 in Gibraltar, and the couple lived and worked in Spain for the rest of that decade. Her early work in public relations and elementary school education ended when she returned to the United States, where her first job was as an assistant librarian at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. On returning to Norfolk in 1960, Kate began work as a librarian in the Freemason Street Library, the city’s first free public library. Two years later, she began at the brand new Kirn Memorial Library, where she worked in the Department of Business, Technical, and Social Sciences before becoming a reference librarian. Taking a sabbatical from 1965-1983, Kate focused her attention on raising her two children, Mary and Ned, and supported community organizations.
Kate returned to the Kirn as reference librarian in 1984 and also served in that capacity at the Larchmont branch during renovations at the Kirn in 1989. She was a familiar and friendly face to many at the reference desk – always happy to research any query from patrons. She retired in 1999. She lived happily to age 86, long enough to tour the new Slover Library with husband Stan and to celebrate the reinvigoration of a tradition that gave her a great sense of purpose and pleasure in her work and through which she was helpful to many Norfolk residents.
Unfortunately, Kate’s son Ned died in November 2020 at the age of 55 while on a birdwatching trip in Ecuador. Ned was an avid bird watcher from the age of six. He was a Jefferson Scholar at the University of Virginia and earned a doctorate in comparative literature and film from Cornell. He spoke ten languages, authored many books including The Field Guide to the Birds of North America and led bird watching excursions all over the world.
When he was out of the country for one of the Brinkley lectures, he wrote from Goba, Ethiopia to let us know that he could not make it since he was filling in for a guide who fell ill. He was headed out to ascend to 13,000 feet to search for endangered Ethiopian wolves!
Ned championed the idea of a lecture series in his mother’s honor, writing,
“I want to say on a personal level that nothing in my life, or that of my sister’s and relations’ (and friends of Kate), has been as successful in helping us in remembering, and grieving, as this lecture series. I know that is not the purpose of the series, but it has been a great godsend to many, not least myself. I see now why so many people in their grief establish ways of continuing the work, the life, the legacy of loved ones. What was once theoretical for us is now very much a source of healing, of anticipation, wonder - of purpose and peace.”
Ned Brinkley
Recently, the Edward S. Brinkley Natural Area on the Eastern Shore, a seaside walkway for birding, was established in his honor. It is fitting then, that the Slover Library also honor both Brinkleys through calling the lecture series the Brinkley Family Memorial Lecture Series in honor of Catherine Lee Brinkley and her son, Edward S. Brinkley, PhD.
Robert D. Putnam, described as the “poet laureate of civil society” by The New York Times, has authored Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, a New York Times bestseller. This new book has been described by The New Yorker as “a passionate, urgent” examination of the growing inequality gap between rich kids and poor kids in America. Visit Slover Library for our evening reception, lecture, Q&A, and book signing.