Growing Up Columbia: Mary Martha Riviere’s Unique Perspective

From her position at the front desk, library circulation coordinator Mary Martha Kline Riviere is often the first library employee students interact with, and these days, alumni and students still depend on her to help them over the internet or phone.

Her endless knowledge of the library collections and processes, combined with her deft ability to make library visitors feel like they have found exactly what they are looking for, has made Mary Martha part of the “Columbia Story.” But there is more to that story!

For Mary Martha, Columbia truly is a family affair. Not only is she the daughter of President C. Benton Kline (yes, of the C. Benton Kline Archives and Special Collections), her husband Kenneth is the son of a former Dean, and her daughter in-law, Alison, is an employee with the Center for Lifelong Learning. Mary Martha works in the John Bulow Campbell Library as a circulation coordinator.

Recently, Mary Martha was awarded the Betsy Burgess Staff Award. This award was established “for one who has demonstrated faithfulness, dedicated service, and Christian character upholding the seminary’s purpose and mission.”

When did you and your family live in the Presidents’ House?

Our family (my parents, my brother John and myself) moved into the President's house in 1971 when my father was named president of Columbia. We were already living in faculty housing (what is now the Moore-Keish's house) as my dad had come to the seminary in 1969 as Dean of Faculty and Professor of Theology.

I was entering 11th grade when we moved into 320 Inman, and my brother was at UGA.

We lived there until the summer of 1975.

Has the campus physically changed much, and what are the major changes?

Oh, certainly! There was no Harrington Center, no NRH and what is now the BLC was the Simons-Law dorm. I'm not sure about apartments in the village, but there have probably been some changes there as well. And of course, the library was just the original building from the 1950s.

The President's house was very different than it is now! There was a big renovation/addition done during (I think) the Mendenhall years. The house was extended out to the back and is a lot bigger now. It had 4 bedrooms and 3 1/2 baths when we lived there. An interesting note—there was a kitchen renovation done before we moved in. Older big houses back then would often have a separate bathroom for the maid to use, a legacy of the Jim Crow era. The "maid's bathroom" was turned into a laundry room as they were getting the house ready for us.

The quad as we know it now was not at all the same. The addition to the library was built in 1995, and that changed the shape of the quad space, as did the building of the Harrington Center. The building now is more than twice as large as it was back then.

How has the student body changed?

You only have to look at class composite photographs from that era to see the changes. In 1971, the vast majority of the students were white men. Gradually in the 70s more women entered seminary, and my father made a point of introducing me to some of them. I believe he thought it was important for his daughter to know that women were in seminary, too. I can't say for sure about yearly or social events. There was a Student's Wives organization who I think hosted the annual Christmas party. It was later called Spouses of Seminarians and seems to be defunct now.

I think students hung out in the Richards Center. There used to be a pool table in what's now known as the Ellis room, and I think maybe a Foosball table too? My husband remembers coming over to shoot pool.

Did you have many opportunities to interact with the students, faculty, staff at that time?

Not a lot, really. I babysat for the Cousar family and went to school with other faculty children. My husband Kenneth's father was on the Columbia faculty from 1966-1973, so we have known each other a really long time. Kenneth's father is A. Milton Riviere. He had several different titles while he was at Columbia, but his last title was Dean of Ministry Development and Associate Professor of Christian Education. He left in 1973 and returned to parish ministry.

I worked in the library during a couple of summers, but there weren’t many students around in the summer back then, so I didn’t get to know many of them. I also was a student myself in the summer of 1976, attending the Greek School, so I did get to have a classroom experience here. At that time, the wives of faculty had a lot of responsibility for hosting social events, and my mother as the President's wife was no exception. We didn't have catered events back then. She shopped for the food and drinks, and served them from her own dishes, including silver trays that she had to polish. All this while she was working and going to graduate school. And I have to say that I was not really much help to her.

I've said before that if I had known that I was going to be working here all these years later, I would have paid a lot better attention at the dinner table!

You seem at ease behind the circulation desk. How did you become interested in working in the Columbia library?

As I mentioned, I worked at the library in the summers. In 1973 and 1974 (or maybe 1974 and 1975? can't really remember!) I had a job working with Harold Prince who was the long-time library director. I did a lot of the same things I do now—running the circulation desk, shelving books, and so on. Add to the mix that my aunt Peggy Kline was an academic librarian (assistant library director at the Emory library) and my mother got her master's in library science at Atlanta University and was a librarian for the City of Decatur Schools. So, libraries were always in my blood, in a way.

Before I came here, I worked in the libraries at Georgia State, UGA and Georgia Tech, and the Dekalb County Public Library system. I tried being in the business world for a few years but realized that libraries were a much better fit for me. I like helping people and solving problems, and that's what I get to do every day.