Anyone who wonders if people still read hasn’t visited the Lakewood Library lately.
The Lakewood branch of the Dallas Public Library, located at 6121 Worth, is among the busiest in the City, loaning books, magazines and tapes to a diverse cross-section of the populace.
On any given day, many of Lakewood’s more than 80,000 books and tapes can be found next to rocking chairs in children’s rooms, on bedside tables in nursing homes, in automobile cassette players during rush-hour traffic and on the homework desks of high school students.
This month, Lakewood books will even spend a part of each day at the State Fair of Texas, where library patron and East Dallas resident Jim Lowe has worked for years as the voice of Big Tex.
When he’s not announcing: “Howdy, folks! Welcome to the State Fair of Texas!” and telling fairgoers about upcoming events, Lowe usually can be found in the Big Tex sentry box reading novels.
“I usually visit the library two times a week throughout the year,” says Lowe, who has been a Lakewood library patron since the 1950s.
“I’ll get five books at a time, and of those, I’ll find two I really enjoy and the others I’ll take back.”
Readers such as Lowe have helped the Lakewood library rack up impressive statistics. From a service area with a population of about 60,000 people, the library has more than 21,000 registered borrowers.
Each year, Lakewood patrons check out about 227,000 books and materials, says Gail Bialas, spokeswoman for the Dallas Public Library.
The Lakewood library also has been active in sponsoring educational and cultural events – sometimes more than 300 a year – that bring people to the library for reasons other than checking out books or doing research.
The library’s Lakewood Art Show, which spotlights the creative efforts of neighborhood residents, will celebrate its 30th anniversary in 1994 and is the oldest continuous show of its type at a Dallas library. The library also sponsors an annual Children’s Art Show.
In addition to recognizing accomplishments, the library has been involved in preserving neighborhood history through oral history audio tapes and a book, and in teaching people to read through a literacy program. Both these efforts were “firsts” in the Dallas Public Library system.
One reason the Lakewood library has accomplished so much is that it has staunch support from the community and from a volunteer service group called the Lakewood Library Friends, Brown says.
Lakewood is the only branch library in Dallas with its own service organization. The 200-member Friends group was started in the early 1980s to help complete the oral history project, edit some of the project’s interviews into a book called “Reminiscences: A Glimpse of Old East Dallas”, and raise money to get the book published.
The group went on to support efforts to repair the library’s damaged foundation in the mid-1980s and to raise funds to improve library operations on an annual basis.
“The money we raise helps support areas the City budget can’t provide for – like extra learning aids, books, paperbacks and book racks, reupholstering furniture and providing for the art show and author’s reception,” says Nancy Busby, president of the Friends.
“Helping someone learn to read was probably the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done as a volunteer,” says Jan Worrall, the first tutor at the Lakewood library – and in the state – for Literacy Volunteers of America.
“My student was a married woman with two children. She had graduated from high school but could only read at the third-grade level when we started. After we worked together for about two years, she reached her goal of becoming functionally literate.”
Many parents believe so strongly in the importance of using libraries and learning to enjoy reading that they bring their children to the Lakewood branch as soon as they are old enough to hold a book and turn the pages.
Some parents bring pre-schoolers to a story time Wednesday mornings, but even those who can’t come during the week find plenty of assistance from children’s librarians at other times.
“This library has been just wonderful for us,” says Kenneth Olles, the father of six children ages 4 to 17.
“Back when Katie, our eldest daughter, was a little kid, they had reading times in the evening, and we would taker her over there in her pajamas to listen to someone read.
“Now that Katie is driving, she sometimes takes her brothers and sisters there in the afternoon to check out books.”
