ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, May 30, 1996 TAG: 9605300114
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: E-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHARLES STEBBINS STAFF WRITER
Mary Terry Kuyk thinks it is amusing that she was born in the children's reading room of the Roanoke Public Library.
Well, she wasn't exactly born in the reading room. But she came close enough to create a cute little family joke.
"This has entertained my children no end," she said with a laugh.
When Mary Terry Goodwin was born Feb. 1, 1900, there was no public library in Roanoke. But her family's home on South Jefferson Street at Elm Avenue later became the city's first library, and the second-floor master bedroom where she was born was the children's reading room.
Kuyk's daughter, Martha Hull of Roanoke, said that for a long time the family joke was that "mother was born in the children's reading room and her brother was born in the stacks." The brother, Edmund Pendleton Goodwin, is deceased.
The house was part of the family estate, Elmwood, that at the time was headed by Kuyk's father, Thompson West Goodwin, president of People's Federal Loan and Building Association.
Eight years later, the family sold the property to the city, which made it into Elmwood Park. Then on May 19, 1921, Roanoke's first public library opened.
This year the public library is observing the 75th anniversary of that opening. About 250 people turned out for a ceremony and open house May 19, the first event of a seven-month observance of the anniversary. Kuyk was the leading guest of honor.
She had not been present for the 1921 opening because she was away at Barnard College, the woman's division of Columbia University-mfk-.
Kuyk (pronounced "Kirk") said there was a lot of excitement about the library and she visited it as soon as she got home from school a few weeks after the opening.
"I was interested in seeing what they had done to the house," she said. "The front hall was where they had the checkout desk, and all the other rooms were taken up with stacks."
Also, a long flight of exterior steps had been taken away, and the main entrance had been moved.
And, of course, the former master bedroom was the children's department.
Kuyk made a confession when asked if she got a library card in 1921.
"I'm not sure I used the library much in those days," she said. "I read trash, you know, being a normal schoolgirl."
But she did become a library user and remains one today. Her favorite reading matter is biographies and murder mysteries.
The original book indexing system, she said, was a series of drawers filled with thousands of 3-by-5-inch index cards. Today's filing system is a sophisicated computer system linking all libraries in the Roanoke Valley.
But Kuyk said she never used the card index. "I just went to those shelves and looked around until I found something that seemed interesting," she said.
The method for borrowing books has changed, too.
"To check out a book then you just took it to the desk and the clerk there stamped a return date in it," she said.
Today a portable scanner is used on a bar code with each book and on the user's library card.-mfk-
Over the years, Kuyk has not shown favoritism to the Roanoke library even though the original one was in her old family home. She has used the Roanoke County library just as much, mostly the headquarters office on Virginia 419. She also is familiar with the county's Bent Mountain branch. She and her late husband, Judge Dirk A. Kuyk, had a summer cabin atop the mountain.
At 96, she now lives in Brandon Oaks and uses the library there most of the time.
She gave up driving only last December, and said that being without a car has made it difficult for her to get to any of the public libraries.
Kuyk well remembers when the library was created in 1921. Sarah Caldwell Butler was the principal organizer, she said, but Kuyk's mother, Martha Terry Goodwin, gave Butler moral support.
"It was my mother who suggested using the Elmwood house as a place for a library," Kuyk said.
At the recent open house, Roanoke Mayor David Bowers noted that the $27,000 raised in 1920 by Sarah Butler was comparable to the several million dollars raised in the 1990s for the Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center project.
This is another indication, he said, that the people of Roanoke can come together to make a better community.
Bowers said he was amazed that the library contained about 350,000 items - books, periodicals and tapes.
The next event in the monthly observances will be at the Melrose branch on June 13 from 6 to 8 p.m.
Other monthly observances at the branch libraries will be on July 7 at Raleigh Court from 2 to 4 p.m.; Aug. 22 at Jackson Park from 6 to 8 p.m.; and Sept. 21 at noon at Williamson Road.
In October there will be a salute to local writers and in November a special program for National Children's Week, Nov. 18-24.
The anniversary observance will end on Dec. 6 at the Gainsboro branch with a program of celebration and remembrance from 4 to 6 p.m.
All the anniversary events are being underwritten by the Roanoke Public Library Foundation
LENGTH: Long : 104 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ARNE KUHLMANN Staff Mary Terry Kuyk, 96, was born inby CNBthe building that housed the children's reading room of Roanoke's
first library. She's pictured in the same room of the library as it
is today on South Jefferson Street.