Last spring, just 13 months after the grand opening of the new Harvard Public Library, our leader, friend, and colleague Roy Moffa passed away. Roy served as chairman of the library trustees, co-chairman of the Library Building Committee, and co-chairman of the capital campaign. His leadership and oversight of all stages of the library project were key to its success. Roy was immensely proud of the library, as anyone who ever took a tour with him could tell you. Although on tours he often spent more time in the mechanical room admiring the state-of-the-art boilers, the room Roy particularly loved was Volunteers Hall. The transformation of this room from clay-covered art classroom to elegant performance space was remarkable. During the first year, Roy was there helping in some capacity for almost every movie night, concert, play, or lecture that took place. The potential of this room as a performance space had only begun to be tapped.
At a trustee meeting before his death Roy brought up the idea of getting a quality piano for this room, to raise the bar on what was possible for performances. He and fellow trustee Charles Kronauer, with assistance from pianist Justin Bartlett, actively researched pianos and had set their sights on a Steinway baby grand piano, but the trustees had not met to discuss how to best acquire it before Roy died. After his death, the library trustees voted unanimously to honor Roy’s memory and his love of Volunteers Hall by using library trust funds to purchase a baby grand piano and to establish the Roy J. Moffa Fund, to help bring increased cultural enrichments to the Harvard Public Library. On Friday, Aug. 29, at 7:30 p.m., former library page, recent Bromfield graduate, and current Oberlin Conservatory of Music student Justin Bartlett will give the first public concert on the new piano. The concert is free and open to the public. In the planning stages is a future concert to properly dedicate the piano in Roy’s honor. Stay tuned…
Ginger Kendall
Harvard Public Library Trustee
