Melody Layton McMahon, December 25, 1957 to December 13, 2021

Melody Layton McMahon, 63, passed away at Clarehouse in Tulsa on December 13, 2021. She was born on December 25, 1957 in Tulsa to Conrad and Beverly (Roberson) Layton. She married husband Michael (Mike) McMahon in Tulsa in 1982. She inspired a lifelong love of learning in her children Maeve McMahon (Ardern Hulme-Beaman) of Liverpool, UK and Niall McMahon (Lauren) of Washington, DC. She was also the doting grandmother to Winston, Niall and Lauren’s Shetland sheepdog.

Melody attended Berryhill School in Tulsa before attending the University of Oklahoma where she was awarded a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Music. She then attended Columbia University in New York, NY where she attained a Masters of Science in Library Service. She later completed a Masters of Art in Systematic Theology at St Mary’s Seminary in Cleveland, OH.

Her career in librarianship spanned the fields of music, general academic studies and, most importantly, theological librarianship. She worked at The Juilliard School (New York, NY) before directing the library at the Cleveland Institute of Music. After a career break to raise her family, she worked at John Carroll University Grasselli Library (Cleveland, OH). She moved to Chicago, IL in 2008 as Director of the Paul Bechtold Library at the Catholic Theological Union (CTU), where she was an active participant in multiple library organizations, especially the American Theological Library Association (she was elected to the Board of Directors in 2012 and served as Vice-President in 2013). She completed her career at CTU as a full Professor of Theological Research and Bibliography, an aspiration she had held from the beginning of her career.

Melody’s work as a librarian was strongly influenced by her belief that she had a vocation, and was called by God to be a theological librarian. This call included her love of Martha and the ideals of hospitality, some ideas from theosis, and the feeling that one way to mirror the image of God is to continue to grow in knowledge and to facilitate this in others.

Melody was an evangelist for open access scholarship and was a regular presenter on the topic, as well as the Library as Publisher Movement. She was on the editorial boards of the journals New Theology Review and Theological Librarianship. She wrote Enthusiasm for the Word: Life and Work of Fr. Simeon Daly, OSB. She edited A Broadening Conversation: Classic Readings in Theological Librarianship, which became a standard textbook in theological librarianship.

A love of travel also characterized Melody’s life, beginning with a high school band trip to Romania with the Young Tulsans. One significant experience in Melody’s life was her six-month sabbatical in 2014; she independently visited libraries in Vietnam, the Philippines, China, Mongolia, and Russia (using the 1,376-mile Trans-Mongolian Railway as her main form of transport). During her sabbatical, she also travelled to Estonia, Iceland, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Though she enjoyed being a solo traveller, she also enjoyed many trips with family members, including trips with her daughter to Belgium, with her son to Spain, and with her husband to the Bahamas, Ireland, and Puerto Rico.

In her retirement, Melody continued to work with and support young scholars with their research in fields spanning sociology, ethnography, and linguistics. She also helped develop a website for the Angela Thirkell Society and wrote this blog with writings on sustainable scholarship and her eclectic interests, especially hymns about heaven. She edited the book Boy, We Had Some Good Times, a book of stories written by her mother and father. Her daughter thinks that Melody’s consultancy on Roman Catholic faith and traditions for the Netflix series The Messiah was very impressive. Her son enjoyed watching and discussing the Arsenal football team with Melody, who supported the Gunners for over 40 years.

Melody has been buried at the green burial site at Woodland Memorial Park Cemetery in Sand Springs. Please make a donation to a local food bank in your area in lieu of flowers.