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Charlotte Amalie
Friday, March 29, 2024
HomeNewsArchivesREAD A GOOD BOOK LATELY?

READ A GOOD BOOK LATELY?

You and your children soon will if the St. Thomas Rotary has anything to do with it.
June 1998 Rotary President Frank Veraart traveled to the Annual National Rotary Convention to learn all there was to know about leading his local Rotary organization.
At the conference, he heard a member of the Annapolis, Maryland Rotary describe a book give away program offered by that chapter. "As you know," said Veraart, "I am always looking for whatever I can get to help our community. As soon as he finished his talk, I was up and at him to see what we could get."
What we got was a 40-foot trailer awash with boxes of books. There appear to be some 24 pallets of shrink-wrapped boxes. Plus a generous number of boxes thrown in on top. If there are 36 boxes of books per pallet, and some 36 books per box, one can estimate some 35,000 to 45,000 books.
One thing Rotary is not lacking is leadership. And one thing Veraart is really good at is delegation of responsibility. Saturday morning at 8:00 a.m., Henry Karlin, DDS opened the trailer for the first time to see just exactly what he had been blessed with as chairman of the Rotary community service committee to develop a reading room at Kirwan Terrace School.
Karlin had taken the precaution of asking several local librarians to take the first peak with him at the goodies Veraart had brought forth. As Karlin would have it; "the Gods were smiling on me this morning."
For one thing, Rotary member George Blackhall had offered some 1,000 square feet of storage space currently in transition at VITRACO Park.
Second, everything was in good order in the trailer and the books were in boxes with the majority of the boxes shrink wrapped on pallets.
And best of all, the librarians who sorted through the first group of boxes were able to certify to the fact the books were in excellent shape, not hopelessly out of date, and most suitable for use. They were also able to verify that according to their sample at least 40 percent of the books were suitable for school use. Truly a bonanza.
Now comes the fun part of inspecting the books and deciding where to place them. Needless to say, Rotary has more than enough books to stock several reading rooms.
In fact, one suggestion this morning was to give every student in the Virgin Islands a book to take home and take care of.
Another suggestion was to invite all librarians and community center managers to look over the books and choose a sample for every book refuge in the territory.
Someone having a forklift that can volunteer it for a couple hours at VITRACO is needed to move the book boxes from the trailer to the door of the indexing area.
Labor is needed to move the book boxes from the front door to the various offices where they will be inspected. Finally, responsible individuals from the various organizations on St. Thomas and St. John interested in receiving books are needed to sort through the books and choose an optimal collection for their organization/ facility. Dr. Karlin is most interested in ideas/ help in accomplishing these goals. To participate, kindly telephone him at his office: 775-9110.
If we do not become a very literate community, it is not for a lack of support by St. Thomas Rotary. It seems a second trailer with another 35,000 – 45,000 books is on its way. The Annapolis Rotary, after stockpiling millions of books, lost their warehouse. They needed to empty their facility, so they simply doubled everyone's current shipment. As Frank Veraart would say: "When it rains, it pours."

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