Sisters Ann Jacobs and Susan Jolley used the St. George Library as both children and adults, passing the love of reading to their children

Description

Recording February 27, 2018 – The Leavitt sisters grew up in St. George, Utah and have many memories of the library. Ann Leavitt Jacob’s first vivid memories of the library are of attending 2nd grade there, though she admitted “the murals gave her the willies.” The murals were of nursery rhymes such as Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf. [A new elementary school was being built at the time, and the library housed one grade.] Mrs. Fae Picklesimer was her favorite teacher. Ann’s classroom had a distinct smell of books, which she later was given permission to check out. Susan Leavitt Jolley remembers the helpfulness of the lady librarians in finding books. As teens, they visited the libraries with friends and to meet up with boys “to study.”
Susan said they had to do research at the library for school English papers and learned about the Dewey Decimal System and how to use the card catalog. But they also read for pleasure. They credit their mother Karma Hirschi Leavitt for their love of reading, listening to her read to them and “begging for one more chapter.”
These women continued using the library as young mothers who read to their children—picture books, then chapter books, and then they got the children their own library cards. They still love reading and read to their grandchildren.
Ann’s oldest son Chris Jacobs did his Eagle Scout project of helping to move books from the St. George Carnegie Library to the new one in 1981 located at 50 South Main. He and other boys in his troop, under the direction of the librarians, carried boxes of books to transfer them to the new library about 100 yards away.
[Ann refers to it as the McQuarrie Library, but it must be the St. George Library.]

Participants

• Ann Jacobs
  
• Susan Jolley
  
• Julie Walton
  
• washcoarchive
  

Interview By

• washcoarchive