John McReynolds/Record Correspondent | Posted: Wednesday, December 27, 2006 12:00 am
It is always the big guys who get the credit.
On June 24, 1907, the Trustees of the Town of Lompoc voted to establish a public library. But the new idea had not originated with president Poland nor trustees Sudden, Spanne, McClure and Sloan.
It had been given its birth by a group of people who held no public office, the ladies of the Alpha Literary and Improvement Club. They had undertaken a petition drive.
Yes, a signature campaign was necessary, even in a town of only 1,400. The notion of a free public library had its detractors. Their talking points were cost and the feared contagion of radical new ideas that they thought spread in books 8 ideas like women wanting the vote, one of those BradicalC ideas that would bloom in a few years.
It was only after the petitions that the trustees picked up the torch.
Six months later, on Dec. 9, a one-story frame building on North H Street opened its doors as the Lompoc Public Library. It Bbecame an institution dear to the hearts of the people,C Owen O?Neill wrote in his 1939 history of Santa Barbara County.
In celebration of that vote 100 years ago, the stories of 100 ordinary people, readers like you and me, the members of the Alpha Club and maybe even a City Councilman or two, are going to be put into print. Not on an ink-comes-off-on-your-fingers newspaper page, but in a real, bound book.
All we, the writers, have to do is compose a paragraph about our first memories of a library.
We can choose any library 8 a library here, or out of state or anywhere. It could be a public library or a school library. The writers may be old-timers who remember back 90 years, or kids who first went to the library last week. They may be people who live in Lompoc now or who used to live here 8 anybody in any way connected with the Lompoc Library.
Authors may write in any language they choose, and there will be no limit to those who participate. BWe need 100 minimum to do the book, but it can be 100-plus,C Lompoc District Libraries Foundation president Suzanne Schwark said.
Schwark, who thought up the book idea, is one of those ordinary, yet extraordinary, people like the Alpha Club women of 100 years ago. For 10 years she has spearheaded the foundation, the independent group dedicated to raising money for the library.
BThis is our lifelong learning institution,C she said, smiling. She always smiles. BThis is where we can answer questions ranging from >What is the legal definition of terror,? to >How can I get this spot out of my rug?? The history of free access to a public library is ingrained in our way of life. There are so many stories of people out there who fall into a book at a library. They are part of America.C
The perpetually smiling daughter of an English teacher in Fond Du Lac, Wis., Schwark moved to Lompoc to teach. She retired in 1998 as librarian at Lompoc High School but before retirement she helped start the foundation. She has served as its president since it was formed 10 years ago and has built it into a financial dynamo.
The foundation raised ,110,000 to double the size of the library in Vandenberg Village and now is generating funds for the development of Charlotte?s Web children?s library on South I Street. It also has repeatedly rallied support for city, county and state funding, or, more frequently, to avert cutbacks, to library budgets. This year the foundation?s endowment, grown from zero to ,200,000 in little more than two years, contributed its first books 8 ,5,000 worth.
Here is Schwark?s paragraph about the Fond Du Lac Library: BThe library was five or six blocks from where we lived. It had lions out in front. You had to sit next to the lions for a while before you went in. The building was red brick, two stories. The second story was a museum. It had stuffed animals. I don?t think I ever went there without going to the museum also. They had a reading room. That?s what I liked because it was so quiet. I spent hours there on the weekends in the winter. I read the Nancy Drew series, and Cherry the Nurse (Cherry Ames, a job-hopping, mystery-solving nurse in a series by Helen Wells). And I loved biographies. I read about Amelia Earhart and Teddy Roosevelt. Did you know he couldn?t see until he got glasses when he was 12?C
Children?s Librarian Patrice Doctor?s story goes like this: BThe library at Maquiling School in Los Banos in the Philippines had a meager supply of books. Most were donated. They were classics so I grew up on the classics 8 the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen, not too much other fiction. I liked biographies and geography 8 a lot of National Geographic magazines. They opened up my world. That?s where my love for travel started. My first exposure came through the library. When I was in fourth grade I came across BIsland of the Blue Dolphins.C It?s set right here on San Nicolas Island. It was one of the few fiction books the school had. Who would have predicted that a kid in Los Banos would have had it as her favorite? I must have read it 50 times. And now I?m here!C
You can send your library story via e-mail to libraryfoundation@blackgold.org or put it in an envelope and mail it to Library Foundation, 501 E. North Avenue, Lompoc 93436. Better yet, you can take it there yourself.
The Alpha Club did not relax after their first big victory in 1907. The members nudged town leaders in 1910 to write a letter to millionaire industrialist Andrew Carnegie and ask for funds to build a new, big library. That building, at Cypress and H where the Lompoc Museum is located now, served Lompoc for 60 years 8 all at the urging of women.
And one final note about women and radical ideas like free libraries. They kept nudging, in Lompoc and elsewhere, and a year after that letter was written to Carnegie, women finally secured the right to vote in California.
Correspondent John McReynolds can be reached at 736-6352 or johnny544@ verizon.net