She never used the library when she was a student at Goucher College in the 1920s. She was a Ruzicka, after all -- the fifth generation in a family devoted to the bookbinding business. Her father's extensive home library suited her just fine.

Years later, when Marie Ruzicka Feldmann was running that Baltimore company, Joseph Ruzicka Inc., her sales staff often visited Goucher's library in hopes of drumming up business. The librarian, Feldmann recalls with a smile, would always ask about her "old friend Marie."

But "she gave her business to my competitor," Feldmann, now 96, said this week. "My own college boycotted me, and still I became successful."

So successful that at a luncheon today honoring Goucher graduates celebrating reunions of 50 years or more (Feldmann marks 75 years as a member of the Class of 1927), the Towson school will announce that she is donating $1 million to its library. Her donation will be used for Goucher's special collections, including its works by Jane Austen. Feldmann is obviously not holding a grudge.

"She's very interested in books, of course, and this plays right into Goucher's needs at the moment," said Ethel W. Berney, a member of the Goucher Class of 1946 who has done a lot of fund raising for the school.

Feldmann's family emigrated from what is now the Czech Republic in the late 19th century, when her father was a young boy. Her grandfather was a publisher and bookbinder who, though a Catholic, criticized the church's practices. His very public objections forced him to take his family to the United States, where they settled in Baltimore.

"I'm afraid my grandfather was as modern as I was," she says with a laugh.

Feldmann graduated from Eastern High School and told her father she wanted to go to college. She meant she wanted to go away to college, but he insisted she attend the women's college a short walk from their Guilford Avenue home. Goucher was located at the time on St. Paul Street, much of it between the 2200 and 2400 blocks, where Lovely Lane United Methodist Church stands.

While at Goucher, Feldmann studied social work. She planned to spend her life working. Her plan, she said, was never to marry and not to have children but instead to be a career woman (it was even more difficult back then to do all three). She ultimately married twice (and was widowed twice) but never did have children.

"My mother thought I was foolish," Feldmann said. "She couldn't understand why I wanted to go to work."

Her mother envisioned that after Goucher, her daughter would be free to join her in attending concerts and visiting museums and going shopping and having lunch. "To her mother's great dismay, Marie had other things in mind," said J. M. Dryden Hall Jr., Feldmann's attorney for more than 40 years. "Her mother never got the adult playmate [she desired]."

Feldmann gave up social work soon after she began, deciding it wasn't for her. She joined her father's library bookbinding business in 1929 -- though she made him promise to fire her if it wasn't working out, just as she intended to quit if the job didn't suit her. Within the next decade, Feldmann was running the company, with its two plants, including one in Hampden, and more than 500 employees. Her customers included libraries at the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland and the Enoch Pratt Free Library.

"Isn't she remarkable?" asked Hall. "She was the women's movement ideal -- 70 years ahead of her time." Feldmann ran the family business until 1985, when she sold it to Information Conservation Inc.

She always loved the arts as well as books. She recalls starting an all-girls jazz band while at Goucher. She got a saxophone for her 21st birthday. "That's when girls used to get diamond rings from their fathers," she said. "I said, 'I don't want a diamond ring.' I asked for a saxophone."

She and a few classmates used their music to finance a post-graduation tour of Europe -- they worked for passage aboard a cruise ship by playing for the other passengers.

At 96, Feldmann looks terrific -- attributing that to good genes. She got dressed up to greet visitors to her apartment at the Brightwood Retirement Community in Lutherville but couldn't wait to take off her gold necklace. She is quick-witted and knows how to tell a story, though she doesn't believe she should be the story, saying "I'm not a celebrity."

"I think I have been the luckiest woman in this world -- first to have lived this long and also to be able to afford to live this well," she said.

Her favorite pastime is still reading. But now she chooses books that not only pique her interest but also have large print. "I'd rather read than eat," she says. "I'm much more interested in what the next book's going to be than what the next meal's going to be."