My Big Story of Little Libraries

Sutton Public Library

I work from home as an English Professor teaching online classes. When we first moved to Sutton and were waiting for our internet to be installed, I went to the library every day to use an office space for work. The library is where I made my first friends. It’s where my husband and I attended our first community events. It’s where I joined the book club, then an exercise group, then Threads (a fiber artist group). It is where I found a place to serve and be served by my community.

It has grown into a space for a community garden, yearly summer picnic gathering space, Trunk or Treat location, and so much more. It became My community as I joined in on Ladies’ Movie Night featuring Barbie, silent auction fundraisers, and was invited to join Friends of the Sutton Library (our local library board) where I soon became President and then Vice Chairperson of the MatSu Borough Library Board.

When I was 10 years old, we moved from St. Louis to rural northern Wisconsin, Hayward. We lived in a house one block from Main Street, and the local public library was only four blocks away. I was tall for my age, head and shoulders above my classmates, quiet, and shy; I didn’t make friends easily, but I’d been born with a love for reading and writing. My home life with a new stepfather was rocky, at best. I spent many afternoons and weekends in the children’s section of the library, sitting snug in a corner under the big windows overlooking the hustle and bustle of Main Street. I discovered Laura Ingalls and Ramona Quimby, National Geographic World Magazine for kids, and everything written by Judy Blume.

Hayward's Carnegie Library

The Carnegie Library in Hayward was built in 1904 with funds from Andrew Carnegie and the townspeople of Hayward. Seventy-four years later, in that same library, I wasn’t bullied and there were no expectations placed on me. I was allowed to come and go as I pleased, leaving my bike parked outside on the bike rack while I lost myself for hours in imaginary worlds. As I moved into junior high school, I discovered Shakespeare and read his complete works before my first day of ninth grade, thanks to the public library.

I met one of my best high school friends in the school library during the lunch period one day that first week of ninth grade. Debbie, my only friend in the world, and I stopped into the library to the delight of our newly found freedom to roam the school during lunch and happened upon Sue, sitting at a table scattered with books and magazines. I recognized Sue from grade school, so we approached to see what she was doing. She told us that she was trying to find out if drinking alcohol was worse for the body than smoking marijuana. The three of us became fast friends.

School libraries continued to be important spaces to me as I finished high school and went to college, mostly relying on them for research and romance novels. However, if I’m being honest, I lost touch with libraries when I became a parent. My kids brought home library books from their schools which we read together, but my busy work and life schedule kept me from seeking out public libraries for many years. As a high school English teacher, I made time in the class schedule to take my students to the school library regularly, for pleasure reading and for research purposes. Still, I couldn’t have told you where the local public library was. However, I knew where all the popular bookstores were.

It wasn’t until I moved to Sutton five years ago that my need for a public library returned, and that need returned with a vengeance. I became involved in our local library just months before COVID hit and programming shut down. However, they still figured out a way for patrons to check out books remotely and, even though the doors were closed, the workers would wrap the books in plastic bags and place them on a table just outside of the door with the patrons’ names on them. When COVID passed and the doors reopened, I masked up and attended gatherings. Then, when restrictions eased and I joined the local and borough boards, it was just before the popularity of challenging books came into play, and that’s a story for another day!