Little Library, Big Heart

by Marti Attoun

At 9 a.m. each Saturday, Helen Myers troops four blocks to the little library in Ellisville, Ill. (pop. 87), and unlocks the door. She hoists the flag outside, then settles down with a good book and waits for company.

"If I have two people come in, it's a big crowd," says Myers, 77.

The great-grandmother could write a book on patience and dedication. For nearly 40 years, she's kept the library humming, spending 37 of those years in a dilapidated shed-sized building. Since October 2003, however, her library has resided in a tidy new building built on faith, donations and old-fashioned sugar cookies.

It all began in June 1966, when Myers opened her library with 400 books from her home shelves. At the time, she shepherded a boys' community service group. "One of the boys noticed that I had a lot of books, and he said, 'I sure wish we could have a library here in town,'" Myers recalls. That's all the motivation the bookworm needed.

"I can't remember ever not reading," says Myers, who was raised in Ellisville and taught school one year there at age 18 with an emergency teaching license issued during World War II. During her life, she's worked as a wallpaper hanger and secretary and has been the village treasurer for the last 30 years.

"If you can read, you can do anything," Myers declares. "Today, though, people don't read. They watch TV and play those darn video games."

That hasn't discouraged her from faithfully opening the library from 9 to 11 a.m. every Saturday to share her love of literature. One of her favorite books is Jack London's Call of the Wild, which she read four times in high school. She prefers non-fiction, though, and is continuously reading two biographies or self-help books at home and two at the library.

"When you consider the size of this town, it's pretty amazing what Helen has done," says Bonnie Powell, 56, who's worked alongside her friend for decades as a member of the Ellisville Goal Getters. The town's mothers organized in 1983 to build a basketball court, and they've been holding monthly fund-raising feeds ever since.

The library, though, has always been Myers' pet project. In the 1970s, when the roof and floor rotted beyond repair on the donated 10-foot-by-14-foot building, she began saving quarters for a new building. The foundation was built from sales of sugar cookies.

Myers rolls out the 25-cent cookies on the first two weekends in October during the area's Spoon River Valley Scenic Drive fall festival. The event brings visitors from miles around to Ellisville and to the library's front door in search of Myers' homemade cookies.

She bakes and decorates 300 cookies shaped like Fulton County, and they're bestsellers. The money goes to pay the library's utility bills. As publicity spread about the state's tiniest library, donations started coming in. First lady Laura Bush, a former librarian, sent seven books and a note congratulating her on her dedication in maintaining a library in such a small town.

With $8,000 in donations, cookie quarters and her own savings, Myers built Ellisville Library II, which opened Oct. 26, 2003, on her own property, four blocks from her house. The building, with white siding and green trim, is 14-feet-by-22-feet and stacked with 3,500 donated hardbacks, new and used.

"I think it's a wonderful little place," says Dale McCone, 92, as he works his way through the Louis L'Amours.
Displayed atop the children's bookshelf are new Harry Potter books. Fiction is arranged alphabetically by authors' names, and non-fiction is grouped by subject. Baskets on the floor hold free paperbacks.

No fines are charged because that would discourage reading. "I've had some books overdue since 1981," Myers says with a laugh.

Only 20 books are ever in circulation at one time, and many weeks Myers opens and closes the library and never sees a soul.

"My daughter said, 'Mom, why don't you give it up and close up?'" Myers relates. "I said, 'No. Somebody, some day, may read. Who knows? A future president of the United States may come in and get a book.'"

Marti Attoun is a freelance writer in Joplin, Mo.

first appeared: 1/2/2005