Blatant Berry: The Library in Winter

Up in Newport, NH, where I grew up, they're hunkering down for winter. The maple leaves just gave their last blast of color and have fallen. The Massachusetts people and other tourists who brought new faces and money to town are gone. The landscape is taking on the shades of gray and white that will be its tone until spring. Some of the 5000 or so souls who live there look forward to winter. Most, especially the older ones, try to find ways to keep the cold, hard season at bay. They decorate for the holidays. They hold events, give awards, and have shows, concerts, and church suppers to entertain one another. They flood the town common for ice skating. Toward the end of the dismal season they hold a Winter Carnival with sled races, skating events, and snow sculpture. They work to add color, conversation, culture, and company to that cold, long, lonely season.

One big event that prepares me for winter and restores my faith in that reservoir of citizen support for public libraries everywhere is the annual Sarah Josepha Hale Award, given by the Richards Free Library, Newport's public library. The award reawakens local pride in the library from the people who pay the taxes for its modest support in a part of the country that hates taxes as much as they do in Arizona or California.

The award was the brainchild of a local author, a poet named Raymond Holden. His wife, Barbara Holden Yeomans, is still, at a very mature age, the spark plug that has held this incredible recognition together for 50 years now. Sarah Hale (1788–1879), the major local celebrity, was left in Newport with her children when her husband unexpectedly died. She took up work as a writer and editor, and among her oeuvre is “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Hale became editor of the leading fashion magazine of her time, Godey's Lady's Book. Her influence grew so much that it was she who suggested the celebration of Thanksgiving Day to President Lincoln. She also suggested to Matthew Vassar the idea of a college for women. Hale shaped the opinion of American women for 40 years through her editorials.

The medal, $500 honorarium, and presentation is funded by the Holden-Yeomans Memorial Fund established by Barbara in memory of Raymond. A board of judges nominates and selects the winner. Nominees must be born or reside in New England and must be “a literary person (poet, dramatist, novelist, historian, journalist, writer, etc.).” The clincher, and what makes the prize such a success for the library and Newport, is that the nominee must be present at the award ceremony and deliver a talk or reading. As a judge, I've been going back to Newport for the Hale Award for decades. I attended the first one in 1956 and heard recipient Robert Frost speak. His participation brought prestige to the award. Since Frost, some of the winners have been John Marquand, Archibald MacLeish, Mary Ellen Chase, Catherine Drinker Bowen, Robert Lowell, John Kenneth Galbraith, David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Arthur Miller, and our local poet and now one of our judges, Wes McNair.

This year, author/illustrator Tomie dePaola won, and hundreds of townsfolk and lots of kids came to the opera house to honor him. It was fun to hear him chide the judges for neglecting children's books for so long. He had illustrated a beautiful edition of Mary's Little Lamb. He read the whole poem, which goes on for more than the familiar verses. The folks were delighted, just as the crowd had been when Frost read “Mending Wall” 50 years ago.

They cheered dePaola, they cheered the library, they lined up to buy autographed copies of his books, and they promised they'd be back next year.

Of course, many Newporters had been to the library earlier that weekend to pick up books, DVDs, and other information and entertainments for the colder and colder days ahead. That little library, run by one of my favorite librarians, Andrea Thorpe, is one of the key tools they use to bring light and warmth to that cold, dark New Hampshire winter. I can't see how the town could ever survive without it.