Outgoing Skidompha Library Executive Director Pam Gormley stands next to a plaque and sculpture crafted by noted Damariscotta artist Jacques Vesery she received as a retirement gift in May 2019. Under Gormley’s name and dates of service, the plaque states: “With unparalleled vision and fortitude, Pam built a legacy, advocated for literacy, embraced our community, welcomed all, expanded our scope of services and fostered the highest standards.” (LCN file)
Pam Gormley, a prominent yet quiet force in the Twin Villages for more than two decades, passed away in hospice care last week following a period of declining health.
Announcing the news in a Facebook post Wednesday, Jan. 7, Gormley’s daughter, Quinn Gormley, said her mother passed earlier that morning surrounded by loved ones at Gosnell Hospice House in Scarborough.
Pam Gormley never fully recovered her health following emergency triple heart bypass surgery in September 2024, her daughter wrote. During the intervening 16 months, Gormley was able to enjoy one more Christmas at home, attend the wedding of her oldest child, KJ, and witness the adoption of a grandson by her daughter and son-in-law.
“That time gave Pam a chance to prepare, and she told us multiple times in the last few months that she felt ready,” Quinn Gormley said in her post.
Born and raised in the Bronx, New York, Gormley enjoyed a 25-year tenure with Reader’s Digest before moving to Maine in 1994. Starting on the nightshift in the publication’s computer center in Pleasantville, N.Y., Gormley worked her way up the corporate ladder to become the senior vice president for logistics and marketing systems.
Following the birth of their second child in 1993, Pam and her husband Mal Gormley decided to relocate to raise their family. Moving to Damariscotta in 1994, Gormley threw herself into her new community, serving on the Great Salt Bay School Committee and joining the boards of several local nonprofits including Stepping Stone Housing Inc., Lincoln Theater, and Heartwood Regional Theater Co., among others.
Locally, Gormley may be best known through her long association with the Skidompha Public Library in Damariscotta. Gormley started with the library in 1998 when she joined Skidompha’s ongoing capital campaign as a volunteer fundraiser. Gormley’s efforts helped raise the more than $3.2 million needed to fund construction of a new library facility at 158 Main St. Construction began in July 2000 and was completed by May 2001.
Pam Gormley waves from the front steps of the Skidompha Public Library in Damariscotta. Gormley, the library’s former executive director, died Wednesday, Jan. 7 following a lengthy period of declining health. (Courtesy photo)
Gormley’s combination of people skills, business management experience, and fundraising expertise earned her an interview for the executive director’s position in 2004. At the time Gormley was on the search committee for a new executive director when the library’s board of trustees encouraged her to get off the committee and apply for the position herself.
“At some point, they asked me to step off the committee and interviewed me for the job, and here I am, 20 years later,” Gormley told The Lincoln County News when she retired in 2019.
Gormley was an excellent administrator and an effective fundraiser, according to close friend and former coworker Jeanne Davis.
“Pam Gormley was good at everything she did, and fundraising was one of those things,” Davis said.
Davis, who served as Skidompha’s director of development from 2003-2011, called Gormley, “the best boss I ever had.” As Skidompha’s executive director, Gormley had a clear vision of the role the library should fill in the community and of her role within Skidompha, Davis said.
“It never took her long to make a decision,” Davis said. “If there was something on the table that needed an answer, it got an answer, and she was very transparent about everything. I think people really admired that.”
Under Gormley’s direction, the modern Skidompha became a home base for the community, welcoming public speakers, formal and informal community groups, educational and public interest programming, theater productions, and musical performances.
In 2008, Skidompha’s community efforts earned the library the National Medal for Museum and Library Service, the nation’s highest honor. Gormley traveled to Washington, D.C. to collect the award at the White House from the First Lady Laura Bush.
One of Gormley’s final major projects for the library was overseeing the digitization of the LCN archives. Beginning in December 2017, Skidompha and LCN collaborated to digitize and preserve every edition of the newspaper and make it available in a searchable database.
That project complete, Gormley formally stepped down in July 2019. She stayed on for another month to ensure a smooth handoff to her successor, Matthew Graff.
More than 200 well-wishers turn out to celebrate outgoing Executive Director Pam Gormley at a reception in her honor at Skidompha Public Library on May 19, 2019. Gormley died on Wednesday, Jan. 7 after a period of declining health. On stage, from left: Skidompha Library Board of Trustees President Karen Filler, past President Bill Bausch, and Pam Gormley. (LCN file)
“Our crossover over in the library was brief and what came through, what was very apparent, was her love of this library and the community and the people,” Graff said. “It’s in every brick and book in this library, and you can feel that. Our community has lost someone special.”
Rem Briggs, co-manager of Skidompha Secondhand Book Shop and a former member of the library’s board, praised Gormley’s leadership and her strategic vision.
Among other attributes, Gormley was quick to see the potential advantages of relocating the bookshop from its longtime home on Elm Street to its current location at 17 Backstreet Landing in January 2017. According to Briggs, book shop volunteers were concerned about the move beforehand, citing reservations about the volume of work involved in the move and the lack of a lease agreement at that time.
Gormley’s intuition, however, was ultimately proven right, Briggs said.
Pam Gormley and her husband, Mal, attend the wedding of their daughter Quinn and her husband Ezra Aistrop-Gormley on May 21, 2017. The Gormleys met while both were working for the Readers’ Digest in Pleasantville, N.Y. The couple was married for 47 years. (Courtesy photo)
“We met with her and laid out all our objections, but she insisted and as always, Pam was right,” Briggs said. “Pam was always right. It has turned into a wonderful place for those of us who work there and for the community … She was a phenomenal person. More than any person I know, she knew how to get things done and when she got them done, she pushed on through. She accomplished a lot of important things.”
Along with other praise, Karen Filler, Gormley’s friend and past president of the Skidompha Board of Trustees, cited Gormley’s efforts at reaching teens and young adults, a demographic sometimes underserved compared the various programming options for young children and seniors.
“She put a lot in the library,” Filler said. “I think that’s why a lot of people have pictures of her laughing. She didn’t just stay in her office. She was always out talking with people. I think that’s why people cared. I think that’s why they gave, because she was a real person.”
For Gormley and her family, caring was not simply an administrative matter, Filler said. The Gormleys often opened their home to teens who needed a warm place to sleep. When Gormley learned local high school students had no place to go immediately after school on Mondays, a day the library was normally closed, Gormley started coming in to open the library from 2-6 p.m. specifically to provides the teens with a place to be.
“The library was open when it needed to be open,” Davis said. “She treated everybody who walked in that door the same.”
In retirement, Gormley stayed busy. In 2020, the Gormleys sold their Damariscotta home and moved to Brunswick. Pam Gormley took a position as the executive director of Housing Resources for Youth, a nonprofit dedicated to finding temporary shelter for unhoused teens.
“She walked the walk,” Filler said.
Gormley is survived by her husband Mal, their children KJ and Quinn, their respective spouses, and her grandson, Terrence. Funeral services will be held at the Second Congregational Church of Newcastle at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 24.
