Recalling a childhood at the library

When Frank and Jane Phillips donated $25,000 to establish the Matilda J. Gibson Memorial Library in honor of Jane’s mother, they gave the people of Creston a gift that would live in the hearts and memories of residents long after their names were forgotten.

Friends of the Library Week begins Sunday and as the FOL board prepares, some recall fond memories from their childhoods at the library.

Then

Jessica Duncan grew up in Creston. After graduating from high school, she left and went to college, met her husband and lived in Arkansas and Alaska before finding her way back to Iowa.

“I grew up on North Maple Street just a block from the library,” said Duncan, “so I spent a lot of my childhood there. I read a lot. I probably read every Nancy Drew book they had. That’s when the genealogy room was the children’s room. It had a fireplace, not that it was ever lit, but it was a great place to go read. It had, back then, hardwood floors, which were just beautiful and added to the ambiance of it.”

When Duncan was growing up, accessibility wasn’t easy for everyone. She had a younger brother who had cerebral palsy and was in a wheelchair.

Before the library was wheelchair accessible and the main entrance was still on North Maple Street, Duncan said she would carry her brother up the stairs, get him comfortable and then go back outside and retrieve his wheelchair.

“But he loved being there, so it was nothing. We were passionate enough about seeing what we could find in that place. There were so many interesting discoveries,” she said.

Duncan’s experiences with her brother ignited her passion to see the library made wheelchair accessible, and with a small group from her eighth-grade class, she created a project for a citizenship contest being offered by Drake University. The project won first place.

“I know we were just kids then, but I like to think that I had a hand in helping facilitate the building becoming handicapped accessible,” said Duncan.

Marisue Lewis has been to the far reaches of Africa and Brazil as a missionary for the First Baptist Church, but eventually she decided it was time to settle down and came back to Creston.

Lewis grew up out in the country and said she remembers coming into town often with her mother, parking on West Adams Street and walking to the library. She also remembers one book in particular she had picked up at the library. Although she doesn’t remember the name of the book, or even what it was about, she remembers an image of a stained glass window depicting the Good Shepherd.

At the time the First Baptist Church was located closer to uptown and Lewis recalls her excitement when she discovered a copy of that window in the church.

“I thought it was such a pretty picture,” she said, “and we were walking down the street and all of a sudden I stopped and said, ‘Mom! Look across the street!’ … In their church was that window, and I just thought it was so wonderful to have found a real picture of it. I couldn’t have been more than maybe 9 at the time.”

Lewis loved the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder so much she remembers exactly where they were shelved — in the children’s section, which was along the upstairs south wall at the time, on the bottom shelf.

One of the first stops Cynthia Blakely made after she moved back to Creston in August was the library so she could pick up a fresh stack of books.

As a child, Blakely said she and her best friend would walk to the library almost daily, and she remembers spending many afternoons listening to stories during story hour and how they would browse the shelves looking for books to check out and take home.

When Julie Schieffer wasn’t delivering papers for her father, who was the circulation manager at the Creston News Advertiser, she was riding her bike or walking to the library to spend time with friends.

Schieffer, who still reads a lot, said the library was a peaceful place for her to go where she wasn’t bothered by anybody and she was free to wander and browse.

“I think I probably was mostly over in the kids section, which is the genealogy room now,” said Schieffer, “but just being in there … It was just a really neat place for me to go. You could just kind of wander and look and check out books and go home and read them and bring them back. It was just one of those places that you enjoyed going to.”

Now

Change is inevitable, and over the years, the library has gone through a lot of changes. From moving the entrance from North Maple Street to West Howard Street to accommodate wheelchair accessibility to adding internet and wifi, Gibson Memorial Library has been able to keep up with the times and continue to move forward.

The changes and additions provide added benefits according the the ladies of the Friends of the Library Board.

“It’s amazing how many adults come in there to use the computers,” said Lewis. “I go in there to use it because my computer’s kind of messed up right now, but I go in there to use one and there’s always other people in there using them, so it’s not just books. The kids also love the movies that are available.”

Duncan said she doesn’t think people realize how critical it is to have access to wifi and staff who can help navigate the internet for things like job applications and email.

“I think that’s a big deal, and I think helping people with some technological stuff will continue to be big,” said Duncan. “I think if it had a meeting space that would be huge, not only for the community but for the library itself to expand their programming.”

She also praised Library Director David Hargrove for his work bringing in programs such as Lori Vicker and her presentation about Iowa’s orphan trains.

Blakely enjoys the ability to choose from a variety of reading material and the quiet atmosphere a library offers.

“There’s just something about going into the library that’s just so calming,” said Blakely. “It’s always quiet and there’s a friendly face when you walk in the door. There was always that friendly face, all the years we walked up those stairs. It’s a place to get away that’s quiet, away from the TV, the news, you know, just away from everything.”