Beloved librarian hit by car has died

Arnold Hyman, a librarian with the New York Public Library for four decades, died on March 3, three days after being struck by a car at the intersection of West 259th Street and Riverdale Avenue.

Police said he was struck at around 1 p.m. on Feb. 29 while crossing the street in the rain. The driver, a 23-year-old woman, told police she did not see Mr. Hyman in time.

Mr. Hyman was brought to St. Barnabas Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries.

At a Community Board 8 meeting on March 14, Capt. Kevin Burke, commander of the 50th Precinct, said the intersection where Mr. Hyman was hit has become a chronic problem. In 2011, there were 17 accidents at Riverdale Avenue and West 259th Street. Mr. Hyman’s death marked the third incident this year.

After a moment of silence, CB 8 committed to drafting a formal request to the Department of Transportation, asking the agency to study the deadly intersection.

In his eulogy on March 5, Rabbi Barry Dov Katz, of the Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel of Riverdale, said there had been an outpouring of grief for the married father of three.

“Over the last few days, I had so many conversations with people from this community where the common theme was shock and a sense of deep loss,” Rabbi Katz said. “As the conversations proceeded, people shared stories of Arnie’s connection to the world of books, his integrity, and most of all his love for his family and friends.”

Rabbi Katz added that Mr. Hyman’s vocation stemmed from his fondest avocation, a love of books.

“Kids who are lucky to have a librarian like him never forget. He was a librarian who knew his customers, could help them find the perfect book for a school report or one to curl up with on a snowy wintery afternoon,” Rabbi Katz said.  

Andrea Lipinski, a colleague of Mr. Hyman’s at the Kingsbridge Library, said on Monday that he was someone who others looked up to. He would draw on his years of experience, she said, to put the minor crises of today into perspective. He often reminded younger librarians of a much more difficult time for their profession and for New York City, the 1970s.

Ms. Lipinski described Mr. Hyman as a “valuable ally” for young librarians, “stubborn, but in the best way possible.”

And when it came to the invaluable skills of research acquired through years of navigating the Dewey Decimal System, Ms. Lipinski said there was no one better.

“There’s just a lot of information that a good librarian has in his head, that you can’t look up,” Ms. Lipinski said. 

Having spent so many years as a librarian who trained and instructed other librarians, Mr. Hyman was a popular figure throughout New York City’s library system, Ms. Lipinski said. 

“His being gone is the end of an era for the New York Public Library,” she added.