Just don't forget, it was and still IS a public library

My family moved to Whitefish when I was 6-years-old back in 1969. The first day we arrived in Whitefish my mom took my sister and me to the Whitefish City Library, when it was in the old city hall, to get books.

My mom complained bitterly when we were not allowed to check out books because we were renting and did not own a house. I heard her loud voice explaining about Benjamin Franklin, free public libraries and an educated populace being the basis of a democracy, but all I wanted was to be read Madeline books.

My mom finally got the policy changed, after speaking to additional public officials, and I was finally allowed to enter the Children’s Section and check out books.

I loved the old Whitefish City Library and those wonderful women behind the desk who guided my reading experiences for many years and allowed me to read the sex-education books (in fourth grade) located behind the counter, and were proud of me when I won reading awards. I lived in that library and did not even notice when it became the Whitefish Branch of the Flathead Public Library in 1974. I think that was the year I got it into my head to read the entire Children’s Section starting with the 000s in the nonfiction. I sailed through Greek Mythology (292), Fairy Tales (398.2), Languages (400s) and really had to pull from within to read about crickets (595.7). The books on airplanes (600s) were great and I loved the poems (811) and the history books (900s) fascinated me.

After school, Saturdays and in the summer months, The Happy Hollisters, Bambi, Pippi Longstocking, Nancy Drew and the librarians were good friends to me as I grew up in Whitefish. At the Whitefish Public Library there were no bullies, no scary teachers with plastic gloves who were allergic to chalk dust, no ski-bunny popular girls, and no boys who lit matches for Bunsen burners with their zippers.

At the Whitefish Public Library, Mitch Adams didn’t die running with his brother, school gyms did not burn down, my friend Velvet did not get hurt by the scary church man, and little girls did not get in trouble for lighting cherry bombs on Main Street.

I have since graduated from high school, college, graduate school and taught for 20 years. I am proud that I discovered in my first library that the previous librarian had placed “Cricket in Time Square” in the 595.7s instead of the fiction section. I am proud that I built a library of 5,000 books for the Rockport Hutterite Colony. I am proud that I was the first elementary librarian in Choteau Public Schools. I am most proud that I read books to my sons. No wonder that when I went on a date with my future husband 26 years ago and he quoted from “Go Dog Go” that I knew at that moment that I had found a keeper.

I am now an elementary librarian at Eureka Public Schools and not a day goes by that I fail to remember the wonderful books that I found on the shelves of the Whitefish Public Library. Everything I am and have done in my life can be traced back to that little library on the top floor of Whitefish City Hall and those kind librarians.

I have read the newspapers with dismay concerning the future of Whitefish’s library and I see both sides. But let us not forget that there was a city library before, and as long as there is still a free public/city library in Whitefish for children to dream within, that is all that matters.

Who owned the library never mattered to me as a child because I wanted to READ. Maybe all this fuss about libraries is great because the public is showing they care about libraries and that access to libraries is important — just like my mom said 42 years ago.

Susan Standard Mepham grew up in Whitefish and is now an elementary school librarian in Eureka.