In memory of Jocelyn Clapp Ozolins: Shelter Island librarian’s passing leaves hearts broken 

Jocelyn Clapp Ozolins passed away on a weekend last month after a brief illness. 

She had lived with cancer for more than a year, but was still at her desk at the Shelter Island Library the week before her death. The head reference librarian for a decade, until her diagnosis she was the organizer of the library’s outstanding calendar of literary and educational events, including Friday Night Dialogs.

Her husband Mari, and sons Alex and Evan, plan a memorial for her in the spring, as her family, friends and the many library patrons who adored her struggle to absorb the loss.

Library Director Terry Lucas described her staff as heartbroken.

By the time Jocelyn Clapp graduated from high school in Chatham, N.J., her family had lived in Newark, East Orange, Maplewood, and Norwalk. In 1971, she lived in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, where she had a view of the harbor from her bedroom window in an apartment furnished only with brain coral and an enormous Peter Max poster when her family decided to rent it.

She graduated from the University of Michigan, majoring in English and art history, and loved Ann Arbor so much that once she graduated, she stayed, working at every kind of job from janitor in a hospital ward for premature babies to making pizzas at a bar.

After four years of low-earning jobs and a lack of direction, Jocelyn’s father appeared in Ann Arbor and drove her back east so she could “start her life.”

In New Jersey, she continued to search for a satisfying career, including a stint in the Pilot Training Department of People Express Airlines. When a friend asked her if she’d be interested in sharing an apartment on upper Broadway in the city, she jumped at the chance.

In 1986, she landed a job as a picture researcher at the Bettmann Archive, an extensive collection of images, including some iconic photographs of American history. Finally doing work that was challenging, exciting and playing to her strengths, she stayed for 15 years.

Well into her 30s and in a stalled relationship, Jocelyn asked a friend if he knew anyone for her. A dinner was arranged. Jocelyn and Mari Ozolins, an electrical engineer of Latvian heritage, started dating, and found common ground in music. They married in 1997.

Jocelyn and Mari bought a co-op on East 15th street, and their first child, Evan, was born in 1998. In 2001, when Jocelyn went into labor with their second child, she knew the drill and they headed for the hospital, only to be sent home by an intern who said she wasn’t ready to give birth.

Once she got home and changed into a robe, she realized the baby was coming, and while Mari tried in vain to put pants on a woman in late-stage labor, hoping to get her back to the hospital decently clothed, Jocelyn stated firmly that she wasn’t going anywhere. Mari called for assistance.

Alex was born shortly thereafter, and a blue stork was affixed to the ambulance — EMS code for an unplanned home birth. Jocelyn was welcomed to the ER with applause.

She told me, “Even though there was a lot of screaming, that was one of the best days of my life.”

In 2012, Jocelyn got a phone call from a neighbor while working the circulation desk at the Greenport library with the news that her Orient home was on fire. The electrical fire that ruined the house didn’t harm Mari, Evan or Alex, who were all home at the time.

“People were amazing,” Jocelyn said. “They came by with casseroles and someone who didn’t know us sent us a check for $200. It restores your faith.”

Mari built a device he called an “oxygenator” to get the smoke smell out of Jocelyn’s books, and they began rebuilding the house. Then, two months after the fire, on her way home from The Strand bookstore, crossing 14th Street in Manhattan with a walk sign near Union Square, she was hit by a double-decker tour bus.

Taken to Bellevue with broken ribs and a serious concussion, she spent the night throwing up, further tortured by a fellow patient in the ER who sang Broadway show tunes all night. In the end she spent only a day in the hospital, and recuperated at their temporary home in East Marion, grateful she hadn’t been injured more seriously.

Jocelyn’s sense of humor was legendary. After the bus accident, she’d say upon leaving work at the end of the day, “See you tomorrow, unless I’m hit by a bus. Again.”

She received her Masters of Library and Information Science in the spring of 2014, and in August of the same year was hired by the Shelter Island Public Library.

She was endlessly curious, with real enthusiasm for a subject when a library patron came to her needing help. Her standard reaction to something new, was, “I’d love to know more about that.”

Part of Jocelyn’s job was to organize programs for the library, and in this role, her supple mind and enthusiasm for new subjects was front and center.

She loved Taylor’s Island and Bayside, Maine, a Methodist settlement that reminded her of Shelter Island. She hated paperwork, loved the beach parties at Wades Beach, and her favorite food was French Onion Soup. We used to talk endlessly about food history, because she had both knowledge and love for it.

I miss you, Jocelyn. You left us too soon.