Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 5, 1993 TAG: 9309030020
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ELIZABETH OBENSHAIN
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
As we try to recruit and grow industries in the New River Valley, CEOs aren't going to be saying: "I love those muscles; I like that work ethic; I don't care if they can't read or write."
We'll have to produce smarter, better-educated workers to be competitive in 2001 - and to reverse the unfortunate image shared by many corporate leaders of the South as being backward and its work force poorly educated.
Yet here we are in Montgomery County, fighting over whether to replace a library that floods every time there is a heavy rain, that lacks a roof to protect its collection of books and space for children's programs.
Although the Board of Supervisors finally approved a bond issue, they did it grudgingly by a tight 4-3 vote. The outlook doesn't look good for passage if our county leaders can't unanimously and enthusiastically campaign for this issue countywide.
Various board members had reasons - the architect's fee, the need for a branch elsewhere in the county, the cost.
Wait a minute. I'm confused. Who decided the details of this project? Some invisible outside force?
And how long has the board had to work out these details and reach agreement?
This is no late-breaking, last-minute issue.
All of us have known for years that the Blacksburg branch library was going to have to be mended or replaced.
Aren't these six of the most intelligent men representing the whole county?
Why do I feel it's Bosnia vs. Serbia here?
What a tragedy if a bond issue for a library should go down to defeat because the supervisors and the county administration could not or would not work out the details and then campaign for the bond issue.
Most frustrating of all is that the new library may get tagged as elitist because it's in Blacksburg.
Libraries have always been part of this nation's commitment to universal education by making books available to everyone.
Single-parent families struggling on one income, graduate and foreign students trying to raise children on part-time pay, the elderly on fixed incomes - for these the library is a free door to knowledge and entertainment.
The library checkout counter is one place I don't mind waiting - especially when there is an 8-year-old in front of me with a stack of 12 books from the children's room.
What a world of imagination books unlocked for us as children.
Somehow there was more time to read when we were younger. Library books were an escape into knowledge and fantasy - and a foundation for future knowledge as we entered high school and college.
At a time when a new children's book often sells for $14.95, a library is a godsend for parents who want their children to read.
It's not affluent families who need the library most. It's those on a limited income - but still with dreams for their children's future.
If we need libraries in other parts of the county as well as Blacksburg, fine. Let's find a way to do it.
Years ago when I covered county government in Fayetteville, N.C., the library director presented each of the supervisors with a library card as the library started an ambitious expansion project. Seems none of the supervisors had ever had a library card. Seems none of them had ever been in the library.
Surely, that's not the case here.
Surely, the supervisors here are committed to reading and learning.
I hope they'll not only be seen browsing for books in the local libraries, but that they'll also be such champions that they'll be in the school hallways this fall as "celebrity readers" to a fourth-grade class in Prices Fork or Elliston-Lafayette or Blacksburg.
We need an example.
We need leadership . . . if we're to build new libraries and the county we want for 2001.
Elizabeth Obenshain is editor of the New River Valley bureau of the Roanoke Times & World-News.
by CNB