[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 43 (Friday, April 7, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2435-S2436]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        KELLOGG-HUBBARD LIBRARY

 Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, Montpelier, Vermont is a very 
special city. It is our state's capital, but it is also one with a 
great sense of community. Much of that community pride comes from the 
Kellogg-Hubbard Library.
  The happiest memories of my childhood in Montpelier revolve around my 
family and the Children's Library in the Kellogg-Hubbard Library.
  I ask that an article I wrote for our local newspaper, The Times 
Argus, about the Kellogg-Hubbard Library, its children's wing and its 
former librarian, Mrs. Holbrook, be printed in the Record.

                 [From the Times Argus, June 13, 1996]

            Montpelier Boy Realizes Miss Holbrook Was Right

                           (By Patrick Leahy)

       The 100th anniversary of the Kellogg-Hubbard Library 
     triggers memories for all of us who have lived in Montpelier. 
     And they are great memories.
       While I was growing up, Montpelier did not have television. 
     We children did not have the advantage of cable TV with 10 
     channels giving us the opportunity to buy things we didn't 
     need and would never use or another 10 offering blessings or 
     redemptions for an adequate contribution.
       Deprived as we were, we made do with the Lone Ranger and 
     Inner Sanctum on the radio and Saturday's serials at the 
     Strand Theater on Main Street. For a few minutes on Saturday 
     afternoon, we could watch Hopalong Cassidy, Tarzan, Flash 
     Gordon, Jungle Jim or Batman face death-defying predicaments 
     that would guarantee you would be back the next Saturday, 14 
     cents in hand, to see how they survived (and I recall they 
     always did).
       Having exhausted radio, Saturday matinees, the latest comic 
     books (I had a favorite) and childhood games and chores, we 
     were left to our own imagination.
       That was the best part.
       We were a generation who let the genies of our imagination 
     out of the bottle by reading. Then, as now, reading was one 
     of my greatest pleasures.
       My parents had owned the Waterbury Record Weekly newspaper 
     and then started the Leahy Press in Montpelier, which they 
     ran until selling it at their retirement. The Leahy family 
     was at home with the printed word and I learned to read early 
     in life.
       At 5 years old I went down the stairs of the Kellogg-
     Hubbard Children's Library, and the years that followed 
     provided some of the most important experiences of my life.
       In the '40s and '50s, the Kellogg-Hubbard was blessed with 
     a white-haired children's librarian named Miss Holbrook. Her 
     vocation in life had to be to help children read and to make 
     reading enjoyable. She succeeded more than even she might 
     have dreamed.
       She had the key to unlocking our imagination.
       With my parents' encouragement, the Kellogg-Hubbard was a 
     regular stop every afternoon as I left school. On any day I 
     had two or three books checked out. My sister Mary, brother 
     John and I read constantly.
       In my years as U.S. senator, it seems I never traveled so 
     far or experienced so much as I did as a child in Montpelier 
     with daily visits to the library. With Miss Holbrook's 
     encouragement I had read most of Dickens and Robert Louis 
     Stevenson in the early part of grade school.
       To this day, I remember sitting in our home at 136 State 
     St. reading Treasure Island on a Saturday afternoon filled 
     with summer storms. I knew I heard the tap, tap, tap of the 
     blind man's stick coming down State Street and I remember the 
     great relief of seeing my mother and father returning from 
     visiting my grandparents in South Ryegate.

[[Page S2436]]

       Miss Holbrook was right. A good and an active imagination 
     creates its own reality.
       In my profession, I read computer messages, briefing 
     papers, constituent letters, legislation and briefings, the 
     Congressional Record--and an occasional book for pleasure--in 
     all, the equivalent of a full-length book each day.
       Interesting as all this is, and owing much of my life to 
     those earlier experiences at the library, the truest reading 
     pleasure was then. I worry that so many children today miss 
     what our libraries offer.
       During the past few years I have had many of my photographs 
     published. DC Comics and Warner Brothers have also asked me 
     to write for Batman or do voice-overs on their TV series. In 
     each case, I have asked them to send my payment to the 
     Kellogg-Hubbard Library to buy books for the Children's 
     Library.
       It is my way of saying: ``Thank you, Miss 
     Holbrook.''

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