Stephen Zane Nonack, an archivist who volunteered to help organize the Provincetown Public Library’s collections, died on Dec. 17, 2024 at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The cause was suicide, said his brother, Peter. He was 72.
The son of Victor and Grace Nonack, Stephen was born on Sept. 14, 1952 in Huntington, N.Y., where he grew up. His father was an engineer and his mother an elementary school librarian.
“Family friends had a shack on the beach at Cold Spring Harbor,” said Peter, “and we spent a lot of time on the beach.” At Huntington High School, Stephen played cello in the orchestra and starred on the tennis team. He graduated in 1970.
Stephen majored in history and early childhood education at Tufts University, and after graduation in 1974, he worked in a preschool. He had met Christopher Saheed at Tufts in 1973, and they committed themselves to each other in 1977. The following year, Stephen graduated from Simmons University with a master’s degree in library and information science. He continued taking courses on and off from 1980 to 1990 at UMass Boston.
Stephen was an early supporter of the History Project, which a group of activists, historians, archivists, and writers started in 1980 with a $300 grant from the City of Boston to document the history of New England’s LGBTQ communities. According to the project’s website, it currently “maintains one of the largest independent LGBTQ archives in the nation, which includes more than 250 collections from organizations and individuals encompassing more than one million documents.”
Stephen spent the bulk of his career as a librarian and archivist at the Boston Athenaeum while also serving as a consultant for Provenance Research Associates. During a hiatus from 1987 to 1991, when he lived “in a very small and very expensive pool house in the Hollywood Hills,” Peter said, Stephen served as curator of manuscripts in the special collections division of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.
At the Athenaeum, Stephen headed reader services and served as curator of manuscripts, developing the library’s scholarly collection and its printed ephemera. He was skilled at creating guides, called “finding aids,” to archival collections. The Athenaeum published its Catalogue of Manuscripts From the Collections of the Boston Athenaeum, which Stephen authored, in 1990.
Stephen always chose to live near the sea, maintaining a home in Bourne for 30 years before moving to Hull, Fort Lauderdale, and Provincetown, where he and Christopher bought a condo on Commercial Street in 2019. After Stephen retired from the Athenaeum and Christopher retired as principal of Cambridge, Rindge, and Latin School, Stephen continued his consulting work. From 2019 on, he spent May to October each year in Provincetown and attended St. Mary of the Harbor Episcopal Church.
When Stephen approached Stephen Borkowski, then chair of collections at the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum, to donate some documents he had found at the Athenaeum, Borkowski seized the opportunity to ask Stephen to help develop guidelines to organize the Monument’s collections.
Borkowski, who was also a library trustee, then asked Stephen if he would volunteer to help the new director organize the town’s public library collections.
He agreed, and according to Library Director Amy Raff, Stephen’s guidance was invaluable. “He did many displays in the library’s display cases,” she said, “his last, in 2024, on the early days of the Provincetown AIDS Support Group.”
In addition to his volunteer work in Provincetown, Stephen volunteered long hours at the Stonewall National Museum, Archives, and Library in Fort Lauderdale. He also gave his time to the Fort Lauderdale Garden Club.
On Dec. 6, 2006, C-Span 2’s Book-TV recorded Stephen’s introduction to Nicholson Baker’s talk at the Athenaeum on Baker’s book The World on Sunday: Graphic Art in Joseph Pulitzer’s Newspapers (1898-1911). His remarks revealed a man in command of his materials, at home in his work setting, and simultaneously authoritative and understated.
“He was the consummate professional,” Borkowski said, “tall and imposing but so modest.”
“My brother was remarkable for his wit,” Peter said. “No one could make me laugh like him.” He was also, Peter added, “a people magnet. He had so many friends in Fort Lauderdale. Why he would take his own life, I don’t know.”
Peter noted that after Christopher’s death from pancreatic cancer in 2020, “Stephen never did feel complete.”
Stephen is survived by his brother, Peter Nonack, and wife Ruth of Bedford, N.H.; nephews Christopher Nonack and wife Sara of Quakertown, Pa. and Henry Nonack and wife Mary of Chester, N.H.; great-nephew Oliver Nonack of Chester, N.H.; cousins John Fahlbusch and wife Ann of Proctorsville, Vt., Bruce Fahlbusch of Bennington, Vt., and Ann Marie (TJ) Sutherland of St. James, N.Y.; his Rondeau and Saheed in-laws; and many friends in Massachusetts, Florida, and California.
A celebration of Stephen’s life is being planned for the spring.
In lieu of flowers, donations in Stephen’s memory can be made to the Community Foundation of Broward at cfbroward.org.
