Opening a door can change a life. In the life of Kalamazoo College graduate Mary Corcoran ’11, the door opened a closet. But the closet belonged to 89-year-old Martha Parfet, whose ancestors come from two of the most prominent families in Kalamazoo history: the Upjohns and the Gilmores. The collaboration between these two women (Parfet as writer; Corcoran as research and writing assistant) has resulted in the recent publication of a two-volume book about prominent local families and the story of the Kalamazoo community. The book is titled “Keep the Quality Up” (based on an Upjohn Company motto; Parfet’s grandfather, W.E. Upjohn, founded the pharmaceutical giant in 1886). The book went on sale this week at the Kalamazoo Nature Center, the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, the Gilmore Car Museum, and Irving’s Marketplace (the former site of Gilmore Brothers Department Store). Sale proceeds will support the nature center, car museum, and KIA.

Parfet and Corcoran met when the later answered a K job posting. Over the years Parfet had become for her extended family the unofficial caretaker and curator of diaries, scrapbooks, photos, newspaper clippings, and business documents of two pioneer families that had settled in the area in the 1830s (Upjohns) and 1880s (Gilmores). The enterprises and achievements of these families helped shape much of the history of the city of Kalamazoo. Parfet wanted to make sure the story of these persons and their achievements lived on, so she decided to write a family and community history based on the information included in these family archives. She placed the ad–“Job helping older woman in Kalamazoo research husband’s family for two weeks.” Corcoran answered.

“When she opened her closet door for me the first day,” Corcoran said, “I became sold on becoming an archivist. The stories are in the documents. There was always something new.”

Corcoran is a researcher and project manager at Upjohn Ancestry. She earned her bachelor’s degree at K in English and studied abroad in Dublin, Ireland. Her study abroad program is kind of fitting; the Gilmore family originally immigrated from Ireland, the Upjohn family from England. Corcoran is working on a master’s degree in archives and archival information from the University of Michigan.