This is a story of two parties and one special cause.
On Saturday night, members and guests of the Illinois Chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators converged on the Kohl Children’s Museum in Wilmette to enjoy their annual fall fete.
This group of overgrown kids-at-heart, most in costume, descended on the museum’s hands-on, child-sized exhibits with all the exuberance of a bunch of 5-year-olds overstuffed with candy corn.
But as Cruella DeVille, Mr. Rogers and the rest swilled warm wine and sucked on Tootsie Pops, a pile of books was accumulating. Each guest had come toting at least one children’s book, many written or illustrated by themselves. Soon, they will be boxed up and delivered to the tiny downstate Illinois town of Benld.
Which brings us to the second party.
On Sunday, more than 200 residents of Benld (pronounced “Beneld”) gathered for the grand opening of the 90-year-old mining town’s first public library. The turnout was considerable given the bleak weather conditions and the fact that Benld is home to just 1,600 souls.
Dedicated to Benld’s beloved former high school principal, 96-year-old Frank Bertetti, the new brick structure is a rare bright spot in a town that has seen its share of hardships.
Unlike Wilmette and its surrounding North Shore communities — which enjoy the benefits of the best schools, park districts and libraries that high-income tax brackets can buy — Benld and its neighboring towns have been socked with one economic blow after the next over the years.
“Immigrants came here to work in the coal mines,” said Michael Baldwin, director of Benld’s library. “They suffered strikes, union battles, poverty, the Depression. They saw their sons and grandsons die in world wars and police actions. Finally, they saw the mines close in the early 1950s.”
It is the students of Benld, Baldwin said, who have been the most enthusiastic about the new library.
“They’ve been dropping by on their bikes and coming in to ask if we’re open yet,” Baldwin said. “It’s been so encouraging. I thought kids these days were so addicted to TV that they weren’t interested in books.”
Soon, the students will be poring over the carefully selected donations collected at Saturday’s costume party.
Among the crowd at the Kohl Museum, Judith Mathews’ getup may have been the most horrifying. She came as an editor, with her face painted a ghoulish green, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth, and her flowing black robes peppered with snippets from rejection letters. Mathews, the author of numerous children’s books and an editor with Albert Whitman Publishing in Morton Grove, brought a dozen books, all published by Albert Whitman.
“They’re mainly grabbers, the things kids wouldn’t be able to resist,” Mathews said of her selections, which included the first four Boxcar Children mysteries. “I used to be a children’s librarian, and most of us will tell you that we find anything to hook the kids in and then gradually work on them to expand their horizons.”
Marlene Targ Brill and Fay Robinson, who arrived at the museum looking suspiciously like themselves, brought copies of their own books to donate.
“This is a wonderful idea,” said Robinson, who dropped a copy of her newest book, “Where Did All the Dragons Go?” (illustrated by Victor Lee) onto the pile.
“As writers of children’s books, we should be promoting reading among children,” added Brill, who contributed two of her most recent works, “Women For Peace” and “Extraordinary Young People.”
Baldwin said he hopes that Benld’s new library, to be stocked primarily through donations, will help inspire today’s young residents of Benld in the same way that Frank Bertetti did for generations before.
“Mr. Bertetti was the principal of Benld Township High School for 38 years until 1961, and an unusually high rate of kids went off to college during those years,” Baldwin said. “He came from a poor family, as everyone else did, but he had a soul-deep belief in education as a means to improving and enhancing life. Mr. Bertetti’s father was a miner, and Frank Bertetti worked the night shift at the mines so that he could finish high school.”
Perhaps the person most influenced by Bertetti’s values was his brother John, now 92, who donated the library to the town in honor of his older sibling.
“I certainly owe him a lot, and I’ve felt he’s never gotten the recognition he deserved,” he said. He explained that after he got out of high school and worked for four years, he wanted to go to trade school. “But Frank said, `No. You are going to go to the University of Illinois and learn chemical engineering. That is the coming thing.’ “
Bertetti said his brother not only offered him encouragement but arranged payment for his undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees in chemical engineering. “And this was at the bottom of the Depression,” he said.
Though Frank Bertetti’s health is frail, he attended Sunday’s grand opening, which featured coffee, punch and a quilt raffle. “I know he’s excited,” John Bertetti said. “Never in his wildest dreams did he ever expect to have a library in his name.”
John Bertetti would not divulge how much he gave to build the library. “This is about Frank, not me,” he said.
The state gave Benld a $45,000 grant to pay for furnishings, books and a computer, he said. The Bertetti Foundation, which John Bertetti founded, will help ensure that the Frank Bertetti Benld Public Library has sufficient funds to operate during its first two years.
Baldwin, who works for the Social Security Administration in Alton, is donating his time as library director. His wife, Cathy, and 24-year-old daughter, Sarah, each will earn a small salary as they share responsibility for keeping the building open Tuesdays through Saturdays.
The library has the capacity to hold up to 10,000 books, both juvenile and adult, Baldwin said. Now open with about half that number of books and half of the necessary shelf space to put them on, the Bertetti Benld Library welcomes all contributions.
The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators is more than happy to oblige.
“We hope to take this library under our wing, and that any time we have a program, members will bring a book for Benld,” said Esther Hershenhorn, the Illinois chapter’s regional adviser, whose own donation was the award-winning “Growing Up in Coal Country” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti.
“Books will bring the world to this town. They will bring possibilities.”
