Our history and our legacy
Visit our 75th anniversary website at www.randolphlibrary.org/75 and you'll find a wealth of information about the development of the library system.
We've constructed a lengthy and growing chronology, and plan to add more detail and nuance over time to explicate the library's history and provide a resource for future researchers.
The milestones and accomplishments listed, however, are only part of the library's story. The other part is more intangible.
While seeking tidbits of library history from the 1990s for the chronology, I came across an article by Bill Morris, then a columnist for the News and Record, profiling Library Director Richard Wells.
The column appeared in late 1993, shortly after a Friends of the Library program featuring renowned author Reynolds Price, who spent his elementary school years in Asheboro in the early 1940s.
Morris was at the event and quoted Price: "It was in the Asheboro library, specifically the old Asheboro Library, that I was permitted to roam at will, to check out adult books whenever I wanted to. I was allowed to swim and dive and sink into the world of books at my own speed."
Price's experience struck a chord with me because it tracked mine at about the same age some 35 years later: riding my bike to the Asheboro library, roaming the stacks to discover books in all subjects, getting away with LP records in the baskets of my bike even though I was way under the age limit for checking them out, receiving canny book recommendations from Martha George that were just a tad above my reading level, pushing me ever forward.
On the day after Chip Womick's outstanding story chronicling our 75th anniversary appeared in The Courier-Tribune, Kathy Gamer Clark of East Windsor, N.J., visited the library. An Asheboro native, she was home for a family visit over the weekend and had seen the article — particularly the photograph of kids at the East Asheboro Public Library, which served the African American community in the era of segregation.
Mrs. Clark, a retired educator, expressed fond, intense memories of the library, which was on the grounds of Central School ("so small you could barely turn around"), and of the librarian, Florence Roper. "She helped make me who I am today," Mrs. Clark said.
On hearing those words, a big smile broke out on my face. The East Asheboro library was closed and the library system integrated in 1964 when the current Asheboro library opened. Florence moved to the new Children's Room, which I made my home-away-from-home very early on.
Although there were other staff members there, Florence was the librarian who took me under her wing. Encouraging me, finding just the right books, pushing me ever forward.
The chronology? That's our history. Reynolds Price's story and Kathy Clark's story and my story? That's our legacy.