‘Way Ahead of His Time’: Endowment Supports Cataloging of World’s Longest Diary

Dayton, Washington, resident, businessman, minister, and teacher Robert Shields liked to chronicle what he read, often describing exactly what newspapers, books, or magazines he read each day. His prodigious diary—all 37.5 million words worth—contains quite a few quotes from literature, the Bible, and more.

And WSU Manuscripts Librarian Will Gregg is just getting started. He’s learned other things about Shields by reading his entries. Meals featured prominently in Shields’ typewritten play-by-play told in five-minute installments, every day, for nearly 30 years: how many sausages he cooked for breakfast one morning; heating up Stouffer’s macaroni and cheese for dinner another night.

The task of cataloging Shields’ diary started in June, thanks to the Robert and Grace Shields Library Endowment. Husband and wife established the endowment when Shields donated his diary, collected in 96 boxes, to WSU Libraries’ Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections in 1999, but he asked that his work be closed until both had died. Shields passed away in 2007, Grace last April.

The $245,253 endowment will primarily be used to process, index, and house Shields’ diary, as well as other related costs. When complete, the remainder of the endowment will support other MASC needs, including the enrichment of resources, collections, and services; specialized library equipment, technology, and computer workstations; staff development; visiting speakers; library use instruction; public relations and publications; and any other enhancements.

“I am delighted about the receipt of this new and important endowment,” said WSU Libraries’ Interim Dean Trevor Bond. “The mission of MASC is to acquire and preserve rare and unique items related to Washington State University and the Pacific Northwest. The Shields diary provides a unique view into one individual’s lived experience in southeastern Washington state. I am grateful that the Sheilds family had the foresight to ensure that we have the resources to properly care for it and to continue the Libraries’ mission to serve the WSU community and fulfill our land-grant mission to engage with the broader public.”

Record of an ordinary family

Gregg said the Shields papers are not only a large collection, but also a complex one: In addition to the diary for which he is known, Shields included photographs, letters, books, pamphlets, receipts, and even a pair of eyeglasses. Preparing the collection will entail sorting content into several major groups or “series,” moving the material into archival-quality boxes, labeling boxes and folders, and preparing a well-researched guide to the collection that will inform readers about its contents as well as its overall scope and historical background. (A preliminary guide to the Shields papers is located on the Archives West-Orbis Cascade Alliance website.)

“One of our most important responsibilities as archivists is making collections accessible,” Gregg said. “We don’t want our researchers to have to take on the onerous task of sorting through dozens of boxes to find what they want.”

Anyone interested in working with the collection is asked to make an appointment with MASC, given that it has not been formally organized, he added.

The Shields collection is remarkable for being a detailed record of a family who were relatively ordinary, Gregg said. Much of the documentation preserved in archives is associated with an event of lasting importance or comes from individuals and businesses that were politically or culturally influential. Records of everyday life aren’t as common; people don’t often think about saving them, and they may not be as attractive to archival repositories.

“For that reason, Robert Shields’ minute-by-minute diary provides a unique account of everyday life in our region for nearly 30 years and gives us a way of seeing historical events through different eyes,” Gregg said. “The diary is also interesting as a literary exercise, one that is supplemented by many typewritten book manuscripts. We hope that the collection will appeal to people in several disciplines at WSU and elsewhere.”

Divergent paths at WSU and beyond

Shields and Grace had three daughters, all of whom attended WSU: eldest Cornelia and identical twins Klara and Heidi. All three have fond memories of people and places during their time at WSU.

Cornelia said she was very impressed with WSU Libraries, where she could research her book, “Seven for Oregon,” a novel about the Sager family’s true adventures on the Oregon Trail. With a small circle of friends, she wrote a play loosely based on the travels of Lewis and Clark, which they acted out and recorded.

Cornelia graduated in 1984, majoring in English and minoring in history, and continued working on her book, published in 1986 and reprinted in 1989, while writing for her father’s literary company, Manuscripts Inc., where he edited and corrected manuscripts but did not publish them. In 1985, Cornelia started her own publishing company, Green Springs Press.

Klara Shields Hicks said academically, she found the WSU Honors Program, now the Honors College, had the most enduring value for its small classes, level of engagement, quality, and rigor. Several WSU professors made a substantial impact on Hicks’ academic and career trajectory: Milton Rokeach, who oversaw her senior research project, which won several academic prizes; David Strothers, from whom Hicks took a debate class where he remarked, “Very good, Klara, but did you have to go for the jugular?”; and Dean Funabiki, who mentored her and asked if she had considered law school, what Hicks described as her “final launch code.”

She graduated cum laude in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a minor in speech communications. After obtaining a paralegal certificate and working as a paralegal for eight years, Hicks embarked on law school at the University of Washington, graduating in 1996 and taking the Washington bar in 1997. She has practiced mostly employment law, first in private practice and then in house, and has been an attorney with the U.S. Postal Service since 2010.

Heidi started with wildlife biology before settling on zoology as her major at WSU, graduating with a bachelor’s degree and a minor in French in 1985. She credits three individuals for influencing her choice to pursue medicine as a career: Richard and Susanna Finnell, both WSU professors, he in veterinary and comparative anatomy, pharmacology, and physiology, she in French, who encouraged her to go to medical school; and Hans Wendt, “another memorable figure” who also rooted her on.

Heidi attended the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, graduating in 1991 while also fitting in a master’s degree in anatomy and cellular biology. She became board certified in family medicine in 1994. Since then, she has practiced full-spectrum family medicine, primarily in Nampa, Idaho, at Saint Alphonsus Nampa Hospital, as well as five years (2007–2012) in Dayton, where she worked in the hospital, clinic, and emergency room. Today, Heidi is the program director for a new family medicine residency program for residents at Saint Alphonsus Nampa Hospital starting July 1.

“We are recently accredited with the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and in the process of putting our program together,” she said. “None of this would have been possible without my dad and WSU.”

‘He is well remembered in our town…’

Like their paths in life, Shields’ three daughters have different memories of their father at work on his diary when they were growing up and later. The family moved to Dayton in 1969; Cornelia remembers his writing becoming more detailed around 1972.

She said her father always had a study in which he wrote—and “he was not to be disturbed except under extreme necessity.” She never actually saw Shields’ diary, apart from the odd page left lying out. But over time, Cornelia worried about how he was describing various people and began to write her own diary to reflect the truth as she saw it.

“Dad was delighted when he learned I was keeping a diary, which I started in February 1974,” Cornelia said. “[His diary] does capture certain aspects of people’s lives, but not always fairly. It gives a good picture of life in southeastern Washington during the time it was kept, what people did, and to some extent their opinions.”

Hicks remembers Shields’ IBM Wheelwriter running 24/7 sometime after the family had moved to Dayton.

“I would have to say it was a comforting sound,” she said. “If you happened to awake in the middle of the night, you would likely hear it…and you would be lulled back to sleep by the cadence of humming and clacking. It was the sound of my childhood.”

Asked what the legacy of her father’s diary would be, she replied, “What value can you place on effectively having a window into your father’s thoughts and feelings and hearing his voice years after he passed? With the advancements in technology, perhaps this will be something that is taken for granted by Millennials, but as for me, my dad was way ahead of his time.”

Shields was forced to stop writing his diary after he suffered a stroke in 1997. In a StoryCorps segment recorded by National Public Radio and aired in 1994, interviewer David Isay asked Shields what it would do to him if he just stopped. The diarist responded, “It would be like stopping…turning off my life.”

That year, several national media outlets covered the story of the small-town retiree and his very unusual diary. Some of the coverage didn’t represent the man Heidi remembers, someone who always had a story to tell, or advice to give, and wanted to know how and what the family was doing. She said she hopes future WSU Libraries’ patrons will see him differently.

“I think if they look at parts of his diary, they will think of him as some sort of strange, obsessive, eccentric creature who recorded his life minute by minute, having no time left to live it. That couldn’t be further from the truth, and I do want people to know that,” Heidi said. “He is well remembered in our town by his students, neighbors, and friends. He really cared about people, and that came across in the way he interacted with them. He was funny and always full of energy, and people loved him. I hope that comes across in his diary.”