December 13, 2015 - A retirement reception in honor of Joan Huff for her 14 years of service to the library was held Friday, December 11th at the Fannie Brown Booth Memorial Library with Friends of the Library, the Women's Reading Club, Preceptor Upsilon Chapter of Beta Sigma Phi, City of Center Mayor David Chadwick, library board members, fellow librarians, and community members attending.
Cindy Griffin, chairman of the library board, presented Joan Huff with a gift showing appreciation for all the time she spent and the extra effort that she put forth to help the library grow. Huff opened the gift to find two beautifully crafted marble pillar bookends.
Joan Huff said, "I want to thank all you for coming. You know, I'm kind of like Ben Hogan the golfer, he remembered all the holes he didn't make and didn't remember the ones he did. Well, I was kind of feeling down the last couple of weeks, I was thinking about all the things I wanted to accomplish that I didn't get to, that I just didn't make it. But y'all have helped me to remember all the things that we have done and I appreciate it."
At the beginning of the reception, David Chadwick spoke, "This is a day we are trying to refuse to acknowledge and Joan [Huff] keeps on being so stubborn. She is determined that she's going to call this retirement and we are going to still continue to try to convenience her to change her mind everyday. I threatened her awhile ago, because she lives on the way home, or when I am going home, that I can stop by and see her four times a day. I feel like after about a week of that she will be back up here," to which everyone laughed.
Chadwick continued with fond memories, "A little over 14 years ago, I got a phone call at home, and I was part of the [library] board and members of our board, Cindy [Griffin] is our chairman, Portia [Gaines] is here... we were without a library. We had just lost our library and I got a call at home from Joan. Joan and I have been friends since childhood and that was not uncommon to hear from Joan. And she said, 'Chadwick,' and I said 'What,' and she said, 'I want to work at the library,' and I said, 'oh, no you don't.'" Chadwick continued to describe his and Huff's exchanges of conversation expressing his thoughts at the time out loud, "I was not going to tell her she was incapable of doing it, but I just thought no Joan, your not strong enough to do that nor am I strong enough to deal with you doing that."
Continuing the story, he recalled asking her, "are you sure you want to do it" and after about 6 months of Joan asking if the board had decided what was going to happen to the library, Chadwick recounted jokingly but with sincerity, "So, finally, finally I gave in and I said Joan, 'We have decided and it's unanimous we want you to work for the library,' lied through my teeth. But it worked. Joan came on and 14 years later, our library is a completely different environment that it has been. It is so well run and so well respected in our community."
"A lot of people are unaware that a library has such a vital part in the community. So, many times we are buying our own books from the bookstore, now you can get them online, Deborah [Chadwick] reads them off a little screen at night, we don't even have to stack them up anymore. What is different; why do we need a library? Every time I come out here, it floors me the number of people that we have on a steady basis," said Chadwick in closing of how Joan came to be at the library. "We truly service the community in ways that no other institution, no other offering does. It is a relationship with the schools, the cities, the elderly, the young."
Chadwick spoke about the funding that is needed to run the library giving Joan praise for her diligent, dedicated work with developing relationships with those funding institutions such as the State of Texas, Brown Booth Foundation, the Friends of the Library, Center Noon Lions Club, Preceptor Upsilon Chapter of Beta Sigma Phi, and others.
"We have thoroughly enjoyed our relationship at the library with you. You are the type of citizen that makes a community like ours grow. I should have listened to you six months earlier when you kept on saying that you could do it and wanted to do it. And we are so glad that you have done it and done it so faithfully for 14 years," finished Chadwick.
Deborah Chadwick, 1st Vice-President of the Friends of the Library, spoke next, "The Friends of the Library wanted to order some books in your honor that will be here permanently with your name in it." The books selected were Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson, The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff, The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey by Rinker Buck, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 by Joseph Ellis, Country Girl: The Life of Sissy Spacek by Mark Emerson, and Texas on the Table: People, Places, and Recipes Celebrating the Flavors of the Lone Star State by Terry Thompson-Anderson.
Following the comments by Chadwick and Griffin, fellow librarians from neighboring areas presented a gift to Huff which was a 'Texas' pillow advising they didn't want her to forget where she was from. Everyone enjoyed visiting with one another and refreshments.
Librarians: (from left) Sandra Davis, Fannie Brown Booth Memorial Library Director; Sue Dear, Jasper Public Library; Sharon Long, Newton County Public Library; Denise Milton, Jasper Public Library; Joan Huff; and Brenda Russell, T.L.L. Temple Memorial Library in Diboll.
