Dessa Hofstetter

Dessa Hofstetter sitting outside with her cat, Blue.

A portrait of Dess Hoffstetter that was originally published in the campus yearbook The Grove, 1958.

Dessa Elvira Devin Hofstetter, born on Nov. 24, 1901, was raised and attended school in Heppner, Oregon. Suffering from an illness during her senior year of high school and balking at the doctor’s advice to stay at home for a year, she accepted an offer from the school librarian to independently study in the library.

This began her lifelong love affair with libraries. In 1924, she ventured out of Heppner and made her way to Monmouth and Oregon Normal School. While at school, she quickly established herself as a superior student and was invited to work in the library.

After graduating from Oregon Normal School in 1926, Hofstetter returned to northeastern Oregon and began work as the children’s librarian at the Umatilla County Library in Pendleton. In 1932, she continued studying library sciences at the University of Oregon, graduating in two years with a baccalaureate degree. She proceeded to University of California Berkeley, where she earned a Certificate of Librarianship. While at Berkeley, Hofstetter worked as a graduate assistant at the Education Library.

Her dedication to libraries continued when she returned to Oregon to work as the head of the School Reference Department at the State Library of Oregon and in Ontario, Oregon as the Malheur County librarian. 

In October 1941, Charles A. Howard, president of the Oregon College of Education (OCE), asked her to return to Monmouth and be the school’s librarian. In 1951, she helped in planning a new library building and oversaw the library collections as they moved into a new building. 

Hofstetter worked at OCE until she passed away from an incurable illness on January 16, 1966. Campus legend held that her ghost was thought to have haunted the book stacks of the library she helped establish.