A lecture for the books
By Steve Herring
Published in News on April 13, 2016 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/ALAN CAMPBELL
Author Margaret Maron, right, shares a laugh with Alice Croom, center, and Becky Dixon on Tuesday after she spoke at the Rotary Club of Goldsboro's annual Henry Belk Lecture at Lane Tree Conference Center.
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News-Argus/ALAN CAMPBELL
Margaret Maron answers a question after speaking Tuesday at the Rotary Club of Goldsboro's annual Henry Belk Lecture.
The Goldsboro Rotary Club celebrated National Library Week on Tuesday and in doing so celebrated the life and legacy of the late Henry Belk.
"Not only are we celebrating libraries and library workers, we are also celebrating a special day in the life of our Goldsboro Rotary Club -- our annual Belk Lecture," club President Tiffany Creech said. "It is named for Henry Belk. Henry Belk was a member of our Goldsboro Rotary Club for many, many years. He served as president and chairman of the programs committee.
"He was actually the driving force behind this program each year during Library Week presenting interesting literary figures to our community. So today's program is a continuation of those programs."
Many of the more than 50 people in attendance at the club's annual Henry Belk Lecture at the Lane Tree Conference Center were librarians, including Wayne County Librarian Donna Phillips, who introduced guest speaker and author Margaret Maron of Johnston County.
Mrs. Maron is the author of 27 novels and two collections of short stories and has won numerous major American awards for mysteries.
Her works are included in contemporary literature classes and have been translated into 15 languages.
She is the 2004 recipient of the Sir Walter Raleigh Award and in 2008 received the North Carolina Award for Literature.
Mrs. Maron spoke about her career and love of writing mystery novels. But she also spoke of her love of books, the written word and libraries.
Belk was born in Monroe and was graduated from Trinity College (now Duke University) in 1923. In 1923-24, he taught at Wake Forest College. He attended Columbia University School of Journalism in 1925-26.
Belk came to Goldsboro in 1926 as editor of The Goldsboro News, and from 1929 to 1968 he served as editor of The Goldsboro News-Argus, and later was named editor emeritus.
Because of cataracts at birth and other eye diseases, he had lifelong vision problems. His wife, Lucille, helped him to overcome this handicap.
"What a pleasure it is to honor the life and legacy of Henry Belk and his love for libraries and for the written word," Mrs. Phillips said. "As Tiffany told you, it is National Library Week and the theme is Libraries Transform."
Each of the librarians in attendance, whether they work in public schools, colleges or universities or public libraries, have stories to share to illustrate that theme, she said.
"Here in our public libraries we see evidence of lives being transformed," she said.
For example, there is a weekly group of boys who meet at the library for the Guys Read program, she said.
"These are boys who according to them hate reading," Mrs. Phillips said. "So we bring them in, and they just want to talk about dinosaurs, trucks and things that make a lot of noise. So we let them come in and talk about those things.
"And guess what? After a year of them doing that they are now reading books about loud things and trucks and dinosaurs. I am really happy to say that those boys' lives have transformed because now they are reading."
Mrs. Maron shared similar stories.
"I really am pleased to be speaking during Library Week because free and open libraries are an integral part of our democracy," she said. "They define who we are as a country. Libraries hold our culture, literature and open the world to us who don't have time or money to be able to travel."
Mrs. Maron recalled a speaking engagement in Elizabeth City several years ago. She met a black man at the breakfast table who shared his newspaper with her.
They started talking and the conversation was fascinating and wide ranging, she said. He was an older man and Mrs. Maron said she knew his education was under a segregated system.
He told her he had dropped out of school in the eighth grade to go work. But he told her he had "stole" his education through the public library.
During another speaking engagement, this one at the University of South Carolina, a professor told her that when she was younger she had a friend who was "out in the streets" and "acting out."
The police were called and the girl ran to keep from getting hauled in with the rest.
"She darted through the first open door that she came to, which happened to be a library," Mrs. Maron said. "She had never been in a library before in her life. But while she was waiting for things to settle down outside, she pulled a book off the shelf and sat there on the floor between the stacks trying to read this book.
"She was really enjoying it, and when things settled down outside, rather than put the book back on the shelf, she put it under her shirt and walked out with it. The next week she brought it back to the library and stole another book."
But like the first, she brought it back, she said. She got another book and started out when the librarian stopped her.
"The librarian said, 'Honey, let's get you a library card. You don't have to steal the books, and you can take as many home as you like,'" Mrs. Maron said. "I keep thinking what would it have been like had the librarian yelled at her and said, 'You don't belong here.'
"That child now has a Ph.D. in history and teaches at the University of South Carolina, all because of a sympathetic librarian who said, 'This library is your library.'"
Mrs. Maron said that libraries had saved her, too.
Growing up in Johnston County her home was miles from town, she said.
"We couldn't afford to buy books, but books were always stacked around our house because the bookmobile came out," she said. "It would let us take as many books as we wanted.
"When I finished reading mine, I would read my brother's. When I finished his, I would read my mother's. She was a huge mystery fan which is how I probably got hooked. We devoured those books like popcorn. So when I came to write it seemed like mystery was the natural fit for me."
Mrs. Maron said at first she thought she was drawn to writing mysteries because she really didn't have anything to say and the form did not demand any personal revelations from her.
"But in the end I have come to realize that there is nothing that I can't say," she said. "Whatever angers me or saddens me about our state I can put it in these books."