A look backward and forward at all things library.
Library #6: This workhorse at 8073 Broadway has served the community nobly since January 25, 1979 when the doors opened to a reading public yearning for more space, more shelves, more books. The above photo shows library staff moving from its small quarters at Pacific and Olive Streets into comparatively lavish new digs in a small shopping center.
Here is how the Lemon Grove Review described the move in 1979:
Moving from one home to another is trying under the best of circumstances. But imagine having to pack 40,000 books and the accumulation of 21 years.
It was a happy move, though, for the Lemon Grove Library staff this week to their new location at 8073 Broadway across the street from St. John of the Cross Church.
Plans for the new library had been approved by the County Board of Supervisors back in 1976.
"Lemon Grove really needed a new library," said Mrs. Neale Clifford, head librarian.
The new library is decorated in warm earth tones with contrasting bright blue, gold and orange shelves. The 9,000 square foot facility includes a multi-purpose room for puppet shows, films and classes, and a reference room and staff offices.
"It's gorgeous!" said Clifford.
Library #7: The beyond-gorgeous, new, Mission Revival style Lemon Grove Library, set to open amid pomp and circumstance on June 1 at 10 a.m., invites you, dear readers, into nearly 14,000 square feet of aesthetic delight, leading edge technology, energy efficiency, a spacious children and youth area, a stunning bookstore for the Friends of the Library, well-planned administrative areas, and the lovely Rosemary Putnam Community Room, opening onto Poet's Patio.
But it is the Great Room that will knock your socks off with its soaring, beamed ceiling redolent of those "warm earth tones" that adorned Library #6 -- and the spectacular photographic mural over the Virginia Spencer Thren Children's Room.
The library staff, following in the footsteps of their 1979 ancestors, has been busy during May moving in the "First Day Collection" of new books, periodicals and media made possible by a $60,000 nest egg from the Friends of the Library and $5,000 from the City of Lemon Grove. And remember, those dollars were matched by the county, resulting in a $130,000 treasure chest in support of lifelong learning.
While you're there, don't forget to look at that handsome bronze plaque on the bell tower, describing the lady who lives there.
May, 1979: A great month for Lemon Grove and California.
Lemon Grove Library #6 launched its biggest summer reading program to date--11 weeks of Thursday reading, art and music sessions for moppets, ages 3-5.
James Mills, California Senate president pro ten, created the first State Historical Society via Senate Bill 62. Housed in San Francisco, the California Historical Society issues one of the most beautiful quarterlies in the nation and is the repository for the story of the Golden State.
Mills, of course, has done more historic preservation than any other individual in state history. Thanks to the Mills Act, thousands of buildings, from modest Arts and Crafts bungalows to major institutions, have been restored for posterity.
The popular Lemon Grove Players opened its production of "The Drunkard," the 19th century melodrama that pitted youthful naiveté against a bum incarnate. Director Michael Harvey (of SDSU Theater Dept. fame) soared to heights of alliterative hyperbole with "a dastardly devil of deepest dye uses demon drink to delude a decoy youth downward to disaster!" Whoa!
Audiences (adults $3, kids $1.50) thrilled to Jesse Enticen as the villain, Paul Roder as the hapless hero and Marcia Sanchez as his hand-wringing wife in this musical production staged at Lemon Grove Junior High -- today, Lemon Grove Academy for the Sciences and Humanities.
Footnote: Michael and Anne-Charlotte Harvey remain active in theater circles. She just starred in Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music" at SDSU's Don Powell Theatre. Respectively, the Harveys are SDSU Theater Professors Emeritus and Emerita.
Twenty-three Lemon Grove students made the Dean's List and graduated from various SDSU colleges, while the 24th got his law degree from Western State University of Law.
The Gas Guzzler's Quietus: Lines at the pump were interminable in 1979. Consumers blamed President Carter, the mass media, foreign potentates, mismatched astrological signs and each other for the chronic shortages and fluctuating prices.
One driver, enraged by a long wait at a Spring Valley gas station, jumped into line ahead of others and was refused service by the plucky attendant, Mustfa Hojabu Khaleghi. The man returned to the end of the line, but when his turn came, he pumped $14.94 worth of gas, then complained that the tank wasn't full.
To prove his point, he jumped into the car, started the engine to show the gas gauge, then peeled out of the station nearly knocking over a passing mother with two tots.
Khaleghi gave chase while motorists cheered and somebody called the cops. In a memorable perp walk, Raymond Childs, 20, was marched back to the station by deputies. Khaleghi signed an arrest warrant charging him with theft (of gas) and endangering three pedestrians. No word on Childs' final sentence and/or fine.
Stay tuned, dear readers, for Take Three of Right Here, Right Now. It's all about you. You made good things happen because you cared enough to go the last mile.
