This year, Village Library in Broadway celebrates it’s 50th birthday! Most of us can’t imagine our community without the many services provided by our local library, and we owe our gratitude to the intrepid members of the original library board.
“Nobody told us we couldn’t do it; so, we did!” Dale Kipps, one of the founding members of the Village Library in Broadway recalls the moment when her friend, Jane Lynch, first approached her with the idea. “We were at church one Sunday when Jane said, ‘we need a library.’” That spark of an idea was all it took for nine hard-working women of the community to make that dream come true.
First on the agenda was a location for the library. The group was given permission to use space in the former Broadway Grade School, and so the work began! It literally took a village to build the library. Dale says, “We were fortunate our husbands were involved in local service clubs. The Jaycees painted the walls and moved the shelving, and the Lions Club helped us out too. So many community members pitched in to help us get this off the ground.”
Area businessmen also contributed to the project. Former Rockingham County Board of Supervisor, Pablo Cuevas was a great advocate for the library. C.D. Lantz, the founder of Lantz Construction Company, donated small tables and chairs he’d bought from the former elementary school to use for children’s programming. Dan Todd (Farmers and Merchants Bank) built the checkout desk, and local resident, Jane Moyers, made the curtains. And the list goes on.
The library was initially staffed entirely by volunteers. During its first year of operation, it had a circulation of about 500 books per month. And, according to library records, the most popular book in 1975 was Peter Benchley’s Jaws! Massanutten Regional Library (then Rockingham Public Library) shared books through the bookmobile and allowed Broadway patrons to use their RPL library card to check out books. The library had a popular paperback swap program at that time—patrons traded books of their own in exchange for paperbacks from the library’s collection.
Dale says the board was very careful in naming the new library. “We wanted to make sure all the surrounding towns felt included. We didn’t want one town to own it more than the others. We thought the name Village Library would make everybody feel part of the library.”
In 1985, the library moved to a space in the Town municipal building. By that time, they had acquired nearly 3,000 books and were continuing to grow their collection each year. They quickly outgrew the space in the Town offices, and volunteers soon began planning and fundraising for a building of their own.
The groundbreaking for the new building took place on June 27, 1991, and on December 7, 1991, they moved into the new building on Central Street. The new building served the community well until 2004 when the town’s population began to increase. Once again, volunteers and staff members began to explore new ideas and possible ways of enlarging the library’s space. At the same time, the town of Broadway was also looking for a way to expand their police department. A solution to both challenges was found when the former Ace Hardware store on Main Street went on the market. The library eventually moved to the hardware store, and the police department transferred its offices to the Central Street building.
On February 2, (almost 38 years to the day it was founded,) over 250 members of the community helped move the Village Library to their current Main Street home.
Current librarian, Barbara Andes has been at Village Library since the year 2000. She recognizes the rich heritage of the library and acknowledges the many volunteers who worked to make the dream a reality. She says, “This library is truly a special place. Fifty years later and we are still going strong because of our great community and because of the strong legacy of all of the people that have blessed this branch with their time, talents and hard work.”
Happy birthday to the Village Library and thank you to the women who had a vision to create a free reading space for the community. Looking through old photos and notes from the past brought back memories of my own experiences at the library. The weekly Storytime brought wonderful new people into our lives, and many of the volunteer librarians became lifelong friends.
True disclosure here: looking through the old photos and notes caused some wistful tears as I recalled the friends who are no longer with us, I was also overwhelmed by the meticulous records the board kept. An old document called “Instructions for Librarians” might include one of the reasons why the library has stayed a strong force in our community: a beautiful mix of directives and kindness. It read, “If confused over anything, write a note, signed and dated, and leave on desk. Someone will attend to it. DO NOT WORRY.”
