To understand the difference The Cincinnati Library has made for me, we need to start in 1949, when I was eleven and about to start the eighth grade. My family had just moved from Washington, D.C. to Detroit that summer. My father had taken a position with the J.L. Hudson Company, one of the Midwest’s largest department stores. I was an average student and had never finished a complete year at any school, as we had moved continuously while my father was in the Navy during World War II. We moved into our small home during the summer, and of course I had not yet met any friends.
Riding my bike that summer along Mack Ave., I saw a small storefront that turned out to be the local library branch. On entry, I found it only consisted of two rooms. But it opened me up to a new way of living. There on the shelves during that summer I was introduced to the Hardy Boys, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Astounding Science Fiction magazine, with writers like I. Asimov and Robert Heinlein. My horizons expanded, and in a few years I was using several libraries, including the ones at school for much much more—science projects, amateur radio, college directions—there seemed to be no limit. I built a working Van de Graf generator for physics class, became W8MLQ, a member of the National Honor Society, and then a Freshman at University of Michigan.
A few short years and I began working for a large consumer products company, and moved to many different parts of the country, ending up in Cincinnati in 1968. And discovered the best library I had ever seen, located a few short lunch-hour blocks from Corporate. Years and jobs kept moving, and I found I depended now on the Library for much more—computer information, books on racing boats and wind, and a book by Don Street about the Lesser Antilles. My new system had me taking out many books from the Library, and eventually buying the best for my own. I learned to chart courses with a sextant, started spending vacations in the Caribbean sailing the Islands. In 1984 we moved to St. Thomas to run our own marina and Yacht Charter Company, aided by the information I had found over the years at my Library—taxes, organizations, governments, marketing—I needed it all!
I am back now and find I need my Library more than ever—for medical help, retirement planning, Medicare rules, investments and more. As always, it expands my knowledge and horizons, gives me great pleasure, and it is always there!
