I’ve always loved books, ever since I was in the first grade and my mother promised if I read a book a week, she would give me a dime for an ice cream cone at the Dairy Queen.
We lived one mile from the library. On Saturday mornings she would tuck a dime in my pocket, walk me to the front door, and point me toward the library.
“It’s that way,” she’d tell me, pointing east. “A big brick building. You can’t miss it.”
I’d walk east on Mill Street to Cook Avenue, down Cook Avenue to Marian Street, then past the Grant Hardware Emporium to the Harmony Public Library. The library was built in 1903 with a donation from Andrew Carnegie, who had made a fortune in steel and had given money for thousands of libraries.
I’d walk through the front door. There would be Miss Rudy, perched on a stool behind the counter. I’d turn in my book, almost always a biography. I love biographies. To this day, my head is filled with little known facts about obscure historical figures: DeWitt Clinton, builder of the Erie Canal; Bernard Baruch, businessman and statesman; and William Almon Wheeler, United States vice president from 1877 to 1881. When he died, though, no one noticed he was dead until 1882. He was a very private man. Plus, in 1881 we had three presidents and in all the excitement no one noticed the death of Vice President William Almon Wheeler.
He was appointed vice president by Rutherford B. Hayes, who left office in early 1881 and forgot to take William Almon Wheeler with him. Then James Garfield became president. Unfortunately, Garfield was assassinated before appointing a new vice president. No one told William Almon Wheeler to leave, so he just sort of hung around. When Garfield was killed, William Almon Wheeler was ready to assume the presidency, but Chester Arthur said, “I’m in charge here” and took over. He was pushy that way.
Before William Almon Wheeler became vice president, he was a librarian. He only became vice president because it allowed him more time to read, and it paid better. He was Rutherford B. Hayes’s college roommate and had never earned much money, so when Rutherford B. Hayes offered him the vice presidency, Wheeler jumped at it. Then, while attending a state dinner, he met Andrew Carnegie, the philanthropist. They were seated at the same table, and Andrew Carnegie was pondering what to do with his money. He couldn’t decide whether to buy a baseball team or give money to build libraries.
William Almon Wheeler leaned over and whispered in his ear, “Baseball is a fad. If you give your money for libraries, your name will be famous in every city and hamlet throughout the land. It will be your legacy.”
So that’s what Andrew Carnegie did. Today, everyone knows who Andrew Carnegie is because of the Carnegie libraries, while William Almon Wheeler, despite being a man of vision, rests in obscurity. No one knows anything about him unless they’ve read his biography, which I did when I was in the third grade.
But not many people have read it. I was at the Harmony Public Library the first week of summer and came across William Almon Wheeler: Man of Vision. I opened it and looked on the due-date card to see who else had checked it out. My name was the last on the card. Sam Gardner. It had been carefully printed by Miss Rudy, along with the return date, May 3, 1970. There was a Coke ring on the cover from where my brother had used the book as a coaster, which Miss Rudy lectured me about when I returned the book.
I remember handing it to her. Remember her looking at it, then peering over her glasses at me and saying, “You need to take care of these books. You wouldn’t set a Coke on your Bible, would you? You take better care of these books, or we won’t let you check them out.”
I was terrified. No more books. That would be tragic. I loved books. I loved going to the library on Saturday mornings when the other boys were playing basketball in the school gymnasium. Loved walking up and down the rows of books and tilting my head and reading the titles. Loved looking through the biographies, especially the Childhood of Famous Americans series. Then walking over to the adult fiction shelves and pulling out the due-date cards to see who had read certain books. That was always enlightening.
People who I thought were pillars of the community and saints of the church had read certain books Pastor Taylor had cautioned us about. Books like Gone with the Wind, which had a bad word in it, a word we Christians didn’t use, even though Miss Rudy had scratched out the bad word and written the word hoot above it. So that Rhett Butler said to Scarlett O’Hara, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a hoot.”
If you went to the circulation desk to ask if the library had a certain book and Miss Rudy didn’t think it was one suitable for Christian people, she would let you know.
She’d say, “We don’t have that book. This is a library, not a cesspool. If you want smut, you’ll have to go to the city.”
She’d say it in a loud voice, so that people would look up from whatever they were reading and stare at you. By the time you reached home, three people had phoned your mother to tell on you.
Miss Rudy attended the Quaker meeting, though it pained her to do so. The elders reading scripture at the pulpit would mispronounce the words, and she would wince. They would read about the ten leapers whom Jesus healed, and she would flinch as if someone had struck her with a whip.
The worst Sunday of all was when Pastor Taylor called on Wilbur Matthews to come forward and read a passage of Scripture. It took Wilbur five minutes to read three verses, and one of them was “Jesus wept.” Five painful minutes, and even then he couldn’t do it. Finally Wilbur said he couldn’t see without his glasses and sat down, to everyone’s relief. No one suspected anything, except for Miss Rudy, who thought, Wilbur Matthews can’t read. And poor Wilbur was so embarrassed, so ashamed, he stopped coming to church.
Miss Rudy went to visit him. She knocked on his front door. Wilbur opened the door. She said, “We’ve missed you at church, Wilbur.”
He said, “Well, I’ve been awful busy. I’ve had lots to do. You know how it is.”
Miss Rudy said, “Wilbur, I can teach you how to read.”
Wilbur blustered, “What do you mean? I know how to read.”
Miss Rudy stared him down. “Wilbur,” she said, “I know when a man can’t read.”
Wilbur began weeping. He was ashamed. He could scarcely read. All these years he’d kept it a secret. But now he was tired of the deception, of patting his pockets like he was searching for glasses. A man can keep a secret only so long. He blurted out, “I can’t read and I’m too old to learn. I’m a dumb old man.”
Miss Rudy said, “Don’t talk that way. You come to the library this Friday at closing time and we’ll start.”
So Wilbur went.
I would walk past the library with my brother Roger on the way to the Dairy Queen after supper on Friday nights. We would drop our books in the outside depository and we’d see the lights on. The doors would be locked. We’d press our faces to the glass and watch Miss Rudy hold up flashcards and watch Wilbur Matthews frown and study each card and then blurt something out.
If he got it right, Miss Rudy would smile. If he wasn’t right, we could read her lips: “Try again, Wilbur.” And he’d try again and keep trying, until he got it right.
He went to the library every Friday night for one year. Miss Rudy never told anyone and neither did he. Sometimes I would see him over at the biographies, looking through the Childhood of Famous Americans series.
After several months, Wilbur came back to church, and when the pastor asked for a volunteer to read the Scripture, Wilbur raised his hand, eased out of his pew, and walked down front to the pulpit. That long walk down. All those people watching. All those people thinking, Oh no, not Wilbur.
Wilbur was scared. His hands shook as he opened his Bible. Then he glanced down, and there was Miss Rudy in the third row, right side; she smiled at him and mouthed the words, “You can do it.” And he did. He read about the ten lepers whom Jesus had healed and how only one had the decency to thank Him. When Wilbur finished reading, he closed his Bible, looked down to the third row at Miss Rudy, and said, “Thank you, Miss Rudy.”
She mouthed the words, “You’re welcome, Wilbur. You’re welcome.”
No one knew what he meant, except for my brother and me—and we never told. Oh, people talked about it. They speculated about it on account of Miss Rudy wasn’t married. Why did Wilbur thank her? What did she do? What was going on? But Roger and I never told, and Wilbur and Miss Rudy never told either. Then people forgot about it, until one year later when Wilbur Matthews died and left his money to the library, and no one knew why, except for Roger and me and we weren’t talking. The library added on a room and Miss Rudy hired the town jeweler to make a brass plaque that read:
In Memory of
Wilbur Matthews—
A Man of Courage
This summer they built on to the library, and the Wilbur Matthews Room is gone. I was there when a worker pried off the brass plaque and it bent, and he turned to his boss and asked, “Do you suppose we oughtta keep this?”
His boss said, “Naw, you can pitch it.” And that’s what he did. I watched him do it. He pitched it in a wastebasket.
But I retrieved that plaque, took it home, straightened it out, and polished it. I’m going to go back to the library, sneak over to the biography section, to the Childhood of Famous Americans series, and find the book titled William Almon Wheeler: Man of Vision. I’m going to put Wilbur’s plaque in that book. It’ll be safe there. No one ever reads it. If someone does find it, years from now, it’ll be a mystery. They’ll look at that plaque and wonder who Wilbur Matthews was and why he was a man of courage. But I won’t tell. It’s a secret and I intend to keep it that way.
I’ve lived in Harmony ’most all my life, in this same little town. I walk up and down the same streets I did years ago, past the same houses and same people sitting on their porches. But underneath the visible lies the invisible—our shameful secrets, our quiet shames.
Then we get found out and brace ourselves for ridicule, but are visited with grace. Grace knocks on our door and pays us a visit. Just like Miss Rudy. Grace takes us by the hand and says, “That’s not so bad. I’ve heard worse. Let’s see if we can make things better.”
When love takes you by the hand and leaves you better, that is home. That’s the place to stake your claim and build your life. You might never get written about in the Childhood of Famous Americans series, but there are deeper blessings to be had.