Carolyn F. Wilson

Carolyn Finkelstein Wilson, affectionately known as Callie, age 89, died peacefully on Friday, Feb 27, 2009, at Four Winds Manor in Verona. Born October 31, 1919 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, she was the daughter of Ruby (Rosenfeld) and Nathan Finkelstein (who emigrated from Russia at the age of 12). Callie was endowed with musical talent, intellect, wit, and athleticism. Over her rich life, she delighted in nature, developed a broad erudition, and acted on her passion for social justice. Callie contributed imaginatively to the great egalitarian movements of her generation, helping to educate labor leaders and workers, civil rights workers and grass-roots feminists, all of whom achieved greater justice in American institutions and society during her lifetime. She was educated at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts and received her masters of library science from the Pratt Institute Graduate Library School in Brooklyn, New York. Callie also completed a US Office of Education post-graduate fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Library Science. After graduating from college, Callie worked at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, where she met her husband Leon Wilson, and they raised two daughters. Callie served in the Women's Army Corps (WACs) during World War II. She enjoyed a diverse vocation as a professional librarian at the New York Public Library, the Pratt Institute, the Parapsychology Foundation, the Watertown, NY, North Central Library System, and as assistant director of the Connecticut State Library. She moved to Madison to be near her sister in 1976, serving as librarian for University of Wisconsin Extension Women's Education Resources and as bibliographer to the US State Department's International Women's Year (1977) Wisconsin State Meeting. Subsequently, she undertook one of the earliest bibliographic and resource studies of women in business for the Neighborhood Self-Employment Project under the auspices of UW's Women's Studies Research Center. An inventive bibliographer, she completed her career at the University of Wisconsin Office of the Women's Studies Librarian, as editor for ten years of New Books on Women and Feminism, a twice-a year-bibliographic periodical. During this time, she also published an important annotated bibliography and essay with G.K. Hall (Boston), Violence Against Women. She traveled widely most of her life, yet loved spending happy hours at her sister and brother-in-law's farm in Dane County with her grandsons and extended family who frequently visited. She took great satisfaction from her years singing with the Madison Symphony Choir. She was also an accomplished flutist, a wonderful gardener and cook, a voracious reader, a gifted writer of letters, a worrier and storyteller whose sudden smile and genuine laughter could dispel both her own sorrow and that of others. Though Callie was profoundly modest, her character was gracious, deeply democratic, hot-tempered, funny. She was greatly loved. Her sister, Helen Bruner, her brother, Robert Finkelstein (Norma), her daughter Tamsen Wilson, her grandsons Ben Wilson and Cody Wilson, many cousins, nieces and nephews, loving friends and colleagues survive her passing. Her daughter, Charis Wilson, M.D., and her parents, Nathan and Ruby, preceded her in death. Friends are invited to visit at Cress Funeral Home, 3610 Speedway Road, Madison, from 3:30PM to 5:00PM. A remembrance celebration will start at 4:00 PM. (This time corrects the notice of death published in Sunday's paper, which made an error in the time for visitation and remembrance.) In lieu of flowers, friends may offer memorial gifts to Planned Parenthood of Dane County, the University of Wisconsin Arboretum, or Smith College.