The Center, consisting of an oak cabinet and desk specially made by Albert Dole of Walpole and designed to hold materials and equipment and a computer for children, will enable children to use the library’s growing collection of educational games under the supervision of library staff members or parents. There is no Internet connection contemplated at this time.
According to Librarian Frankie Knibb, this project, organized by The Friends of the Walpole Town Library “makes it possible now to do something for the littlest library users, those between the ages of 3 and 7.”
Frances Potter was a teacher in Walpole, Brattleboro and Alstead in a long career of service to area children, and she was an active board member of the library.
According to her daughter, Jill, of Walpole, “We are absolutely thrilled that this is the project the Library Friends funded. Mother was a teacher all of her life, and she was particularly involved in Walpole’s library where she served for many years on the board. She was especially interested in children’s reading and tutored a lot of children in the neighborhood when we were young. In fact, during the summer she used to read at 10:00 every morning, and neighborhood kids would come to our house on the south end of the Common. Anywhere between 5 and 10 would come. I remember “Robinson Crusoe” very clearly from that time.”
“Also when I was very small, she started an authors’ program here at the library and she would get New Hampshire authors to come and do a lectures. I remember coming with her to see a woman named Elizabeth Yates. What I remember most about her was that she had an incredible sweater made from the fur of her German shepherd!”
Jill Potter noted that her brothers Ed and Bruce of Walpole and niece Emily from Westminster West were also at the ceremony and that Ed had been born in the “hospital” next door to the library, now the building housing Berkley & Veller Greenwood Country Realty and Clark-Mortenson Insurance.
Lyn Cooke, President of the Friends of the Walpole Town Library, organized the ceremony and reception at the library and expressed the pleasure of the Friends in being able to direct memorial gifts in Mrs. Potter’s name to the children’s computer center.
Chuck Bingaman
.
.