The next time you visit Kent Memorial Library and hear giggling from the children’s department, it could be from kids transfixed by a puppet show.
The sturdy wooden puppet theater, about the size of a standard refrigerator, has been entertaining residents of all ages for 43 years.
Photo by Dick Lathrop
Susan and her precious smile outshines the garden of flowers.
Lynne Markwell, a library clerk, noted in an email, “The puppet theater is used daily! The kids love it!! It’s not uncommon to see parents, grandparents and caregivers pulling up chairs to watch their child perform in a show.” Children’s Librarian Wendy Taylor elaborated further in an email, saying, “Even the middle schoolers will put on plays. The little kids love being around the older kids and watching them.”
So how did the library come to own such an enchanting stage for kids?
It all started in 1982 with a cheerful nine-year-old named Susan Marie Lathrop.
Who was Susan Lathrop
Susan was born to Jackie and Dick Lathrop of Newgate Road in 1973. Dick, now 89, has vivid memories of Susan, recalling dates, details and conversations as if he were half his age. Jackie passed away in 2020.
Dick said Susan was a happy, fun little girl, not bratty at all, who loved to laugh. Her best friend at the time, Julie Haas (now Julie Ansart), also remembered her laughing. She said, regardless of the time of the year, the two would dress up in Halloween costumes, skip to the end of the driveway and wave to cars driving by on Newgate. She recalled Susan’s mom smiling and laughing behind the front window.
They would sleep over at each other’s houses nearly every weekend. Since their parents didn’t allow them to invite themselves over to the other’s house, they would phone each other when their parents weren’t around, and one would ask the other to call back with an invitation.
The two drew Spirographs constantly. “That was like our favorite thing to do,” Julie said. And, they played outside often.
Susan also enjoyed puppetry. Dick and Jackie would drag the living room couch away from the wall and get behind it with makeshift puppets, as Susan enjoyed their improvised shows in front.
Illness strikes
When she was six, inexplicably, Susan started vomiting and having headaches. One doctor thought she had an ulcer. When one of her eyes started turning in, the Lathrops took her to an eye doctor, who told them to take her to Hartford Hospital at once. There, they faced the grim diagnosis that Susan had a fast-growing brain tumor and only a 25% chance of survival.
She was operated on and underwent rounds of radiation. Dick remembered her being in the hospital on Christmas Day when a benevolent fellow church member brought them a small Christmas tree.
Susan lost her hair and wore a wig. She was also fitted with a shunt running down the back of her head, which she wore for the rest of her life, Dick said.
Miraculously, she got better. Her hair grew back, and once again, for 3 ½ years, she enjoyed a joyous childhood of drawing, running outside with friends and laughing–always laughing.
Then, in the summer of ‘82, the tumor returned with a vengeance.
Dick remembered asking Susan’s Hartford neurosurgeon if the specialists at Boston’s Dana-Farber hospital might help. He said no.
Nine-year-old Susan was dying, although her parents didn’t tell her.
Dick recalled Susan saying, “Daddy, I don’t want to go back to intensive care.” He replied, “Susan, you’re never going back to intensive care. Don’t worry about that. I’ll take care of you.” She remained at home.
Dick and Jackie did tell her 11-year-old brother, Doug, that she was dying, and naturally, he was devastated.
Dick worked at Travelers Insurance and remembered Jackie calling to tell him that Susan had passed. A co-worker drove him home.
In Susan’s Hartford Courant obituary, a brain tumor research association and the Kent Memorial Library were listed as suggested donation recipients.
The library received over $1,300.
Birth of the puppet theater
Dick said the idea for a puppet theater came from then Library Director Eugene Biggio. His assistant co-directors at the time, Anne Borg and Francine Aloisa, talked warmly about Biggio’s enthusiastic, forward-thinking personality. In particular, Aloisa remembered his drive to make the children’s department “more appealing to kids.”
Dick and Jackie fully endorsed the project, considering Susan’s love of puppetry.
The library hired Suffield craftsman Walter Winkler, a retired German master cabinet maker, according to his Hartford Courant obituary. He had worked 22 years at the Hitchcock Chair company in Riverton, Connecticut.
Winkler built a full-size cardboard mockup of the theater to obtain the Lathrops’ approval. Dick recalled viewing it on the craftsman’s front lawn and has a photo of it.
Winkler completed the actual wooden theater in the spring of 1983, and the library hosted a series of special puppetry events that summer, according to the Suffield Southwick Advertiser/News.
Photo by Wendy Taylor
Dick Lathrop, beside the Kent Memorial Library puppet theater, donated 43 years ago in memory of his daughter, Susan.
When Dick visits the library now, he likes to walk up to the children’s department and view the theater with its brass plaque mounted on the front, reading, “In memory of Susan Marie Lathrop, February 21, 1973 – July 23, 1982, from her family and friends.”
(Author’s note: I interviewed Dick Lathrop at his home on February 21, which, coincidentally, would have been Susan’s 53rd birthday. As I walked back to my car in his snowy driveway that gloomy morning, I looked up to the sky and said, “Happy Birthday, Susan. I hope you realize the joy you’ve brought to loads of kids. May it continue for decades to come.”)