Day 13, Saturday, February 24, 2024: Morrilton, Arkansas to Fayetteville, Arkansas
- Mark Carl Rom
- May 7
- 5 min read
Carnegie libraries visited: Morrilton, Arkansas
On September 14, 1914, Mrs. E.E. Love, the President of the Pathfinder Club of Morrilton, Arkansas, wrote Bertram that this women’s Club “has established and is now maintaining a public library in said town.” She goes on to describe that they have a building and over 3000 books, and that the value of the library was at least $12,000. Could Mr. Carnegie provide the funds to the Pathfinder Club?
Rookie mistakes.
Bertram responds that, if you already have a library, just get the town to pay for its maintenance. Why do you need my help?
In answering, Love explains that, well, the building is really an abandoned church, old and in disrepair, that could be sold for no more than $200-$300, and that the Club did have money to maintain the library for the next three years.. The rest of the $12,000 comes from the value of the land and the library’s books.
Bertram, always chipper, informs Love that Carnegie wouldn’t donate the money to a women’s club – no offense – and that if the town really wanted a library then actual public officials would need to make the request.
That’s the last Bertram hears from Love and the Pathfinder Club. Ultimately, Carnegie donated the cash after the Mayor made the case, and the Conway County Library that the money built continues to serve the community today.
Norman, Arkansas is a little town with a little library. The 14 foot by 14 foot library, with some 3000 books, two computers, and wifi is open three afternoons each week. It was once certified by the Guinness Book of World Records to be the smallest free-standing public library in the country. I cannot locate any library that has the opposite-of-surpassed it (surpassed it in tininess?). On the same block as the library is a tiny city hall, masonic lodge, house, and utility building. It’s not a scale model village, even if it feels that way.
Norman was an entire town of tiny buildings. Those that were still occupied.
Driving through Arkansas’s Oauchita Mountains I lost cell coverage, meaning I could not use Waze for directions or continue listening to David Nasaw’s Andrew Carnegie, so I turned on the radio. I scanned through country rock, classic rock, and Christian rock before landing on a station broadcasting a Christian service. The preacher’s voice was comforting, not irritating; confident, not arrogant; joyous, not sorrowful. Delivering his sermon, he advised his listeners that they are called to do only two things. A lengthy biblical exegesis followed. At long last…the station faded out, so I’ll fill in the blanks, with his approval I hope. Love your neighbor. Serve God.
One of the many criticisms of AA is that it is too religious, with too much “God talk”. Four of AA’s 12 steps do indeed reference God. Step 3: [We] made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood him. Step 5: [We] admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Step 6: [We] were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Step 11: [We] sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
The Step that omits the word “God” is the critical one to understand. Step 2 states that “[We] came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” The key phrase here is “a Power greater than ourselves.” As that phrase is too unwieldy to repeat over and again, the Power (or, as AA members often say, the “Higher Power,” or HP, as in “My HP…”) is simply shortened to “God.” It is common for AA members to say that your Higher Power can be anything you want it to be. God, yes, but also nature, or the painting of Madonna (the singer, not the Blessed Virgin) on your mantle, as one member confessed, or even a doorknob, which I’ve heard members say, even if I thought that seemed stupid. For me, the power greater than myself is simply the power of the community of AA members, of individuals seeking to stop drinking and make themselves whole. I have heard more than a few AA members, who freely admit to having a HP, say “I’m an atheist!” in front of the gathering. Try saying that in a church that is not Unitarian.
In Chapter 4 of The Big Book (the colloquial name for Alcoholics Anonymous, considered to be the bible of AA), entitled “We Agnostics” it is written “When, therefore, we speak to you of God, we mean your own conception of God. This applies, too, to other spiritual expressions which you may find in this book. Do not let prejudice you may have against spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you.”
My own spiritual path has been a winding one. I grew up in the Lutheran church: my father for a time was the church’s Sunday School director and my mother was the choir director and organist, and my family were among the charter members of the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Fayetteville. In college, I thought about becoming a minister. I read Rheinhold Niebur, Paul Tillich, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. When my church’s minister had a heart attack, for several months I led the Sunday services. Then, my road to Damascus event was on the low road. One fine Ozark Sunday I was in the pulpit, looking out at my flock, when it struck me that I had been out to the wee hours of the night sinning. Rather than going forth and sinning no more, I chose instead to stop sermonizing and continue transgressing.
As in so many place, without the efforts of women there would have been no libraries in Arkansas. In 1905, the women of Sevier County, on the Oklahoma border in southwest Arkansas, formed a Library Association to begin planning for a library, as reported in Sevier County and Its People, by the Sevier County Historical Society. Although it is not clear whether the Association was formally a women’s club (in “A Little History of Sevier County Library De Queen Branch” the Association was merely formed by “a group of interested citizens”), when it first elected its officers in 1906 all were women: Mrs. T.E. Brown, president; Mrs. Herman Dierks, vice president; Mrs. H.J. Large, secretary; Miss May Rice, treasurer. That same year they opened a library inside the county courthouse. To raise money for its opening, the women did what women did: held bake sales, hosted ice cream socials, and produced one act plays. This allowed them to buy 125 books for the library, including Ben Hur and Freckles.
The Norman library is not the only tiny one in the Land of Opportunity that is Arkansas.
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