Rather than heading directly from the Carnegie in Stamford to the next Carnegie in Belton, I added fifty miles to the direct 223 mile route by swinging over to Ballinger to revisit a Carnegie I’d previously been to. I owed it to Ballinger, as it was the first Carnegie I’d discovered and was so blown away by its magnificence, that it launched my desire to search out all the others. In the years since I have gotten to 980 of them (including twenty-three so far on this trip) in seven countries on four continents, each a gem, all thanks to this Carnegie in Ballinger.
On that previous visit to Ballinger in November of 2005 (http://georgethecyclist.blogspot.com/2005/11/comanche-texas.html ) I was in the midst of a long, circuitous ride back to Chicago from the Telluride Film Festival, via friends in Northern California, San Luis Opisbo, Los Angeles and Arizona, as always stopping at libraries along the way to use their internet and rest the legs.
As I approached the Carnegie in Ballinger on that first visit, two blocks off the Main Street of the modest town of 3,500 residents, I thought I had been given the wrong directions, as the building in the distance on the right where the library was supposed to be was a towering building constructed of limestone with a pair of columns and such majesty I thought it had to be a church or a shrine of some sort. I had never seen a library of such stature.
A stone slab out front verified it was a library and a Carnegie. I remember gasping that a library in such a small town, or anywhere, could be so stately. In the back of my mind I recalled Andrew Carnegie had funded some libraries, but i didn’t realize the magnitude of his beneficence, providing for over 2,500 of them all over the world.
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As I approached it a second time I hoped it lived up to my memory of it. I was not disappointed in the least. Countless others have recognized its distinction, writing about it and coming to its rescue when it was in danger of being torn down. The most friendly librarian, Carolyn, gave me three articles written about it (a six-page article in the January 1989 “Texas Highways,” a six-page article from the April-June issue of “Texas Hill Country Magazine,” and a one page tribute entitled “Thank You, Mr. Carnegie” from the August 2011 issue of “American Way”). Carolyn enthusiastically shared many anecdotes of its history, some included in the articles and some that weren’t.
The library included an auditorium upstairs that could accommodate up to two hundred that Carnegie contributed an additional $5,000 for above his original $12,500 bequest. When the town asked for the extra $5,000, Carnegie’s assistant who administered the library program, James Bertram, categorically said no. But a local Scottish rancher, Jack McGregor, sent Carnegie a personal note “from one Scot to another,” asking for the money and Carnegie obliged.
The auditorium has been a tremendous civic asset hosting dances and church services and weddings and graduations and bridal and baby showers and other community events, including wrapping bandages during WWI. During WWII the Army-Navy Club used it for recreational activities for the enlisted men who trained at nearby Bruce Field. It features a vintage jukebox from the ‘40s.
Carolyn said the library nearly went the way of twenty other Carnegies in the state as it had fallen into great disrepair and was slated to be torn down in 1975. The town was already making arrangements for a new library when Mary Sykes, a granddaughter of McGregor, led a drive to raise the funds to save and restore the library. An architect’s plans called for half a million dollars to do all that needed to be done, a seemingly impossible amount for a small town to come up with. But she persevered getting incremental donations. She got it up to $38,000 with garage sales and benefit concerts and food sales and such. Then an oil executive who grew up in Ballinger contributed a few thousand dollars and then a few thousand more, eventually amounting to $32,000, and the company he worked for gave an additional $52,000. National organizations began to take notice and eventually all the money was miraculously found.
For awhile the town couldn’t afford a librarian, so volunteers from local service organizations filled the role. Carolyn had been on the job for six years after managing a Pizza Hut. She said it was a perfect job for her as she likes people and books. She handed me a sheet listing all the Carnegies in Texas and their status. She said she could make a copy of it for me. I told her all the information was on Wikipedia.
“What’s that?” she asked. I told her it was an incredibly comprehensive internet encyclopedia that had information on everything, even Ballinger. Its information on Ballinger mentioned it had once been home to a Cincinnati Reds minor leaving baseball team in the ‘50s and listed two notable citizens, a golfer and a musician, obscure information that was news to her.
Our talk was interrupted by a couple of phone calls and a couple of patrons returning books, all of whom she told of someone who was biking around the state visiting its Carnegie libraries. Before I left she took a photo of me with the Carnegie portrait in the background. It was quite a contrast to my previous visit. When I walked in the person on duty, a husky older guy, was on the phone with his feet up on his desk. He blurted into the phone, “I’ve got to go, I’ve got a situation to deal with.” It was in my pre-ipad days, so asked to use the computer. He wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to visit any porn sites. Even though no one else was in the library he ordered me off the computer after thirty minutes saying others were waiting to use the computer even though there was no one else in the library.
As I approached it a second time I hoped it lived up to my memory of it. I was not disappointed in the least. Countless others have recognized its distinction, writing about it and coming to its rescue when it was in danger of being torn down. The most friendly librarian, Carolyn, gave me three articles written about it (a six-page article in the January 1989 “Texas Highways,” a six-page article from the April-June issue of “Texas Hill Country Magazine,” and a one page tribute entitled “Thank You, Mr. Carnegie” from the August 2011 issue of “American Way”). Carolyn enthusiastically shared many anecdotes of its history, some included in the articles and some that weren’t.
The library included an auditorium upstairs that could accommodate up to two hundred that Carnegie contributed an additional $5,000 for above his original $12,500 bequest. When the town asked for the extra $5,000, Carnegie’s assistant who administered the library program, James Bertram, categorically said no. But a local Scottish rancher, Jack McGregor, sent Carnegie a personal note “from one Scot to another,” asking for the money and Carnegie obliged.
The auditorium has been a tremendous civic asset hosting dances and church services and weddings and graduations and bridal and baby showers and other community events, including wrapping bandages during WWI. During WWII the Army-Navy Club used it for recreational activities for the enlisted men who trained at nearby Bruce Field. It features a vintage jukebox from the ‘40s.
Carolyn said the library nearly went the way of twenty other Carnegies in the state as it had fallen into great disrepair and was slated to be torn down in 1975. The town was already making arrangements for a new library when Mary Sykes, a granddaughter of McGregor, led a drive to raise the funds to save and restore the library. An architect’s plans called for half a million dollars to do all that needed to be done, a seemingly impossible amount for a small town to come up with. But she persevered getting incremental donations. She got it up to $38,000 with garage sales and benefit concerts and food sales and such. Then an oil executive who grew up in Ballinger contributed a few thousand dollars and then a few thousand more, eventually amounting to $32,000, and the company he worked for gave an additional $52,000. National organizations began to take notice and eventually all the money was miraculously found.
For awhile the town couldn’t afford a librarian, so volunteers from local service organizations filled the role. Carolyn had been on the job for six years after managing a Pizza Hut. She said it was a perfect job for her as she likes people and books. She handed me a sheet listing all the Carnegies in Texas and their status. She said she could make a copy of it for me. I told her all the information was on Wikipedia.
“What’s that?” she asked. I told her it was an incredibly comprehensive internet encyclopedia that had information on everything, even Ballinger. Its information on Ballinger mentioned it had once been home to a Cincinnati Reds minor leaving baseball team in the ‘50s and listed two notable citizens, a golfer and a musician, obscure information that was news to her.
Our talk was interrupted by a couple of phone calls and a couple of patrons returning books, all of whom she told of someone who was biking around the state visiting its Carnegie libraries. Before I left she took a photo of me with the Carnegie portrait in the background. It was quite a contrast to my previous visit. When I walked in the person on duty, a husky older guy, was on the phone with his feet up on his desk. He blurted into the phone, “I’ve got to go, I’ve got a situation to deal with.” It was in my pre-ipad days, so asked to use the computer. He wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to visit any porn sites. Even though no one else was in the library he ordered me off the computer after thirty minutes saying others were waiting to use the computer even though there was no one else in the library.
He didn’t diminish my appreciation for the library. I was certainly glad to have returned and learned its fascinating history, not unlike many of the Carnegies. A few miles down the road the cycling gods rewarded my detour with my second neckerchief of these travels, a black one with snaking white swirls, a beauty in a class of its own, just as the Carnegie Libraries are.
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