Carroll Leonard Westermeyer

1919 - 1997

Carroll Westermeyer, an accomplished flutist, taught music in a Seventh-day Adventist college and academies in Colorado and California before becoming a librarian. He worked for over fifty years in the Seventh-day Adventist educational system.

Westermeyer was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, one of three children of Leonard Edmund, who worked at Union College, and Lottie Angell Westermeyer. He attended Walla Walla College, now University, where he graduated in 1943 with a B.A. in music, with flute as his performance area. During his study at WWC, he played in the Walla Walla Symphony and studied under its principal flutist, Ira Lockney. He later talked about that experience and his senior recital:

Ira Lockney was my teacher the whole of my tenure there, 1937-1943. He had a beautiful gold [plated] flute, which he offered to let me use for my graduation recital. I declined for fear something would happen to it. Actually, I gave my recital on both piano and flute. [Stanley] Walker was my major professor.

Westermeyer conducted the band and orchestra at Pacific Union College during the 1944-45 school year, following Noah Paulin, a legend at the school who had just retired. At the end of that year, he accepted a position at Campion Academy in Colorado, where he taught until the end of the 1953 school year. During those years, he completed an M.Mus. at Northwestern University.

He returned to California in 1953 and taught music at San Pasqual Academy until 1956. From 1956 until the late 1960s, he was in charge of the music program at Thunderbird Academy, now Thunderbird Adventist Academy, in Arizona. While at TA, he started a band festival in his first year that became a highly successful annual event.

Following completion of an MA in librarianship at the University of Denver, Westermeyer began working at Loma Linda University in 1970. He worked primarily in technical services, where he oversaw the change from the Library of Congress to the National Library of Medicine classification system. He was also involved in the implementation of the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) in 1978, enabling LLU to be one of the first five libraries in Southern California to utilize this revolutionary bibliographic service.

In 1978 and 1979, Westermeyer assisted in the development of the libraries at the University of Montemorelos and the Colegio Adventista de Bolivia, respectively. From 1980 to 1983, he served as chair of the LLU technical services department, and, following his retirement in 1985, continued to work part-time at the reference desk for another decade, an activity he particularly enjoyed. He also helped Mesa Grande Academy set up their automated library system and in 1996 assisted on a volunteer basis in the LLU library technical services department.

He was one of the organists in the Calimesa Church and shared his music in other churches in the region. He and his wife, Eileen, who died in 2007, had three sons, Leonard, Raymond, and Jeffrey.

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Sources: Marilyn Crane, "In memory of a former librarian," ASDAL Action newsletter (Association of SDA Librarians), Fall 1997; letter to Dan Shultz, 11 July 1993; Emails from Bob Romans, 9 March 2010, **]12, 16 April 2010; Program listings, Walla Walla Symphony, 1930s and 1940s; Numerous references in the Pacific Union Recorder, 1953-1964; Ad for shared ride to California, Lake Union Herald, 5 August 1947; Social Security records, 1930 U.S. Census Records..