MORAVIA - After three local Girl Scouts staged a women's history presentation that brought laughs from the audience, Barbara Adams asked the 10-or-so females in the Powers Library audience to talk briefly about their lives and careers.

At first, you could sense a bit of hesitation in the room. But Adams would not be deterred.

“I wanted the Girl Scouts here today to know there are many remarkable women living right in this area,” said Adams, who put distinct emphasis on the word “many.”

Nancy Gilbertson spoke first. A well-known pianist and advocate for progressive causes, the Moravia resident spoke of her recitals, the music lessons she gives and her run for the Cayuga County Legislature as a Green Party Candidate several years ago.

Locke Town Supervisor Jean James talked of being a “wife, mother, and avid reader.”

“I'm thrilled to be the director of this library because of its historical significance,” Leslie Joshi said.

After taking over what she believed to be a temporary assignment of just one year, a series of odd and unforeseen events involving her co-workers led Nancy Snedeker to become an important fixture at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Museum and Library in Hyde Park for many years. She left that facility in 2000 and settled in Moravia. �

A native of New Jersey, Snedeker studied plant science at the University of Connecticut. She would marry and eventually had two daughters. The family lived in Millbrook, which is in Duchess County, about 20 miles from Hyde Park.

Her early career decisions, while enjoyable, were not the most lucrative. First, it was a job a local plant nursery; then she worked at a library at Vassar College.

“Great fun, lousy pay,” Snedeker said.

For her first year at the FDR library, Snedeker's job was to send duplicate items there and mail them to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. But then there were staff cuts, and another co-worker left because they banned smoking there.

“I was at the right place at the right time,” said Snedeker, who would eventually work as both an archivist and a photographer.

Because of a legacy that continues to grow more admirable as time passes, there were countless celebrities, writers and politicians who visited the library each month. On one day, she met Walter Cronkite and Paul Newman. She worked with several influential historians, including Pulitzer Prize winnersDoris Kearns Goodwin and the late Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

The three Girls Scouts in attendance Sunday were Kristine Endres, Courtney Furst, and Megan Hamilton. The audience was asked to guess who the “New York State Women of Note” were after Endres gave a brief bio of each, and Furst and Hamilton performed a short skit about their lives.

There were more than a dozen women highlighted, including Susan B. Anthony, Lucille Ball, Shirley Chisolm, Amelia Bloomer, and Harriet Tubman.

Afterwards, Snedeker talked of making the most of opportunities, enjoying those whose path you cross, and the pride in being able to call one's self an American woman.

She also talked of the difficult childhood Eleanor Roosevelt had to endure. Only when she was sent away to boarding school in her mid-teens did she find a sense of purpose, a sense of herself.

Snedeker quoted Eleanor's Roosevelt's most famous bon mot - “a woman is like a teabag, only in hot water do you realize how strong she is,” and the audience nodded their heads and smiled in agreement.