Library event set for Saturday
By From staff reports
Published in News on August 13, 2014 1:46 PM
MOUNT OLIVE -- The Steele Memorial Library cornerstone is finally home -- or it is at least at the site where the man is pays tribute to used to have his home.
A rededication ceremony for the cornerstone will be held Saturday morning at 10 a.m. marking the third time it has been dedicated or rededicated with a Masonic ceremony led by a grand master since it was first laid in 1935.
The library is named for the late Dr. W.C. Steele, who championed a public library for Mount Olive in the early 1930s. He died before the library could be built, but when completed in April 1935, the library was named in his memory.
Dalton W. Mayo of Clinton, grand master of the Grand Lodge of North Carolina, will conduct the ceremony. Members of Mount Olive Masonic Lodge No. 508 will assist.
The ceremony is open to the public.
A light reception will follow in the Evans Room of the new Steele Memorial Library, which opened July 21.
The library is located in the former Belk department store that sits on the site where Steele's house originally stood.
Library tours will be available.
Steele was an active member of Mount Olive Lodge 208, as well as the Mount Olive Rotary Club and Mount Olive Presbyterian Church.
The cornerstone was rededicated when the library was moved from its original location to the former bank across North Chestnut Street in 1996.
Saturday's event is being co-sponsored by Mount Olive Lodge No. 208, the Mount Olive Historical Association, and the Friends of Steele Memorial Library.