In 2015 the Big Sandy library committee received this letter with a contribution for the new library. “The Mountaineer got permission from the library to run this letter. Imagine the pride that Mrs. Weathers must feel when she hears that her contribution actually went into building a new library for her home town.
“Rarely does a person have the chance to make a specific contribution to an establishment and its dedicated staff, which had a major impact on his or her life. The modest check I enclose is long overdue and belated thank you for the library I knew and used as a child growing up and going to school in Big Sandy in the 30’s and 40’s.
Among my early memories are trips into town from our farm north of Big Sandy every week during the summer months. My mother sold cream at Courtnage’s Creamery and traded eggs with Oliver’s Grocery in exchange for needed staples.
Times were hard for many Big Sandy families during the depression years with very little cash available. Our treat during that weekly trip was a stop at the library to check out an armload of books. My mother, Della Wright, especially loved reading poetry aloud. My father, Bert Wright, taught me to read before I started school using the labels on products in the kitchen cupboard. This must have caused problems for our teacher, Miss Zelda Belisle, who taught the combined first two grades.
But, it was the town librarian, Miss Anna Beck and her mother, Emma Beck who opened my eyes and mind to what lay beyond our small town by suggesting ever more difficult reading material. This started me on the satisfying path of a lifelong reading habit that has given me hours of pleasure, companionship, and information. One is never alone if there is a book handy.
That early library was housed in a gray, one story stucco building located by the railroad tracks back in the days when trains still rolled through Big Sandy, thus creating a vibrancy to other points of contact, commerce, varied interests and entertainment plus travel.
This small building also served as a storage depot and distribution center for food items allocated to qualified recipients under the various government public works programs to alleviate the hardship of families struggling under the faltering economy of the 1930’s.
Managing the inventory and distribution of those commodities became another of Anna Beck’s duties. As, I suppose, so did the cleaning, minding the coal-fired heating stove, ash removal and snow shoveling of the sidewalk in front of the building. She may have been aided somewhat by a frail, elderly widow named Mrs. Snow who did such work for several businesses along Main Street. It was once told that Mrs. Snow also rang the bell at the Methodist Church to announce the time of services on Sunday.
As I grew older and left the area, it never occurred t me as I returned to visit my family, to drop by and thank Anna Beck. I am, however, deeply grateful to her and the others who kept our small library running through their dedication and competent service to Big Sandyites living under difficult circumstances caused by the depression.
Perhaps in years to come those who will be served by this new library will have their own memories of those who will oversee and expanded and technologically different library from the one of my generation knew and depended on. The libraries today offer their patrons so much more than was available or even dreamed of back then.
My two older brothers, Ray and Lloyd Wright and my sister Myrtle Wright Richard, dropped out of school to help support our family and were never able to return.
In their memory and that of our parents Bert and Della Wright, my brother Howard Wright of the class of 1949 join me in wishing you success in meeting your ambitious goal of completing the library by Homecoming 2015 and I enclose the modest check toward that goal.”
