This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 10, 2011 - In the tiny, circumscribed world of my rather chaotic childhood, the public library in our city was a place of refuge and serenity for me.
When I think of that place, I have some gauzy impression of its imposing classical facade, with all the suggestions of permanence and stability such architecture provides us, but the recollections of the Little Rock Public Library I cherish most are of the children's department, which was on a lower level of the great Carnegie pile.
The children's room was full of light and full of books. The furniture and proportions of the rooms were to a little boy's scale, and I felt secure being there, cosseted by shelves full of books. As much as I loved reading books there, or being read to, I loved having the privilege of bringing books home with me even more, books enough to satisfy an enthusiastically encouraged love of reading.
Sometimes my taste ran to Babar and Queen Celeste and Monsieur Bemelmans's "Madeline"; nevertheless, my favorite books were all-American -- "Lentil" and "Make Way for Ducklings," both by Robert McCloskey.
Once upon a time, in June 1995, to be exact, a mother duck elected to make her nest at the corner of Delmar Boulevard and Kingsland Avenue on the grounds of the University City Public Library. She deposited her eggs there, and they dutifully yielded ducklings.
A summer program was in progress at the Delmar-Harvard School next door to the library, and the library's director was concerned that youthful interest in the ducklings might spell trouble for them. So she decided to transplant them. She put the ducklings in a box, and with their mother in attendance, proceeded to have something of a parade up Delmar to Lewis Park, where you will find a very nice and accommodating pond.
Linda Ballard was director of the library who made way for ducklings back then. Recently, she retired. Her service to the library spanned 40 years. She's been its director for almost half that time. On Saturday evening (March 5) the library threw a valedictory party for her, and an enthusiastic and adoring crowd turned up for the lovefest among the stacks. It was obvious to me, from the quite breathtaking outpouring of affection and respect for her, that she was revered.
There were all sorts of official commendations for her from various governmental bodies and officials celebrating her professional skills, as well as warm good wishes and some appropriate gifts, such as naming an adjacent garden for her.
Last year, Ballard was nominated for the Missouri Library Associations employee of the year. Librarian Christa Van Herreweghe wrote the nomination, and if you read it you'll get an idea of Ballard's accomplishments beyond duck husbandry.
For example, Herreweghe wrote, Ballard ushered in the digital age to the library and was a leader in library automation and providing public access computers for the community.
She embraced technological innovation and made the library an early adopter of electronic resources.
She has been an advocate for changes beyond her library as well, Herreweghe said. She was influential in the creation of the Municipal Library Consortium of St. Louis County where nine independent libraries use a shared catalog and allow patrons at any library to access materials easily from all other libraries.
Herreweghe described Ballard's work to create "Libraries without Borders" that makes it possible for residents of St. Louis City, St. Louis County and St. Charles County to be able to use all four library districts in the St. Louis area.
All that Herreweghe described is commendable and remarkable indeed. But in considering the accomplishments of Linda Ballard, I'm am drawn inexorably to her making way for those downy Delmar ducklings, and I am pulled back to my little-boy library experiences in Little Rock, Ark., as well.
Being a good librarian, after all, has mama and papa duck qualities. A conscientious librarian leads her ducklings -- you perhaps, me for certain -- to the deep and wide pond of literature and learning and eases them into the water.
Once they - we - learn to swim through the pages and become immersed in the words and ideas and images, we can move about with authority and grace and eventually, magically, we test our literary wings and take flight or cross busy streets all by ourselves, the better to search for adventure.
That is how it worked for me in the public library in Little Rock anyway.
And from what I heard Saturday night, it works that way in University City, too.