So when Barb Reagan died of cancer in February at the age of 53, it only seemed appropriate to honor her memory with some kind of project that connected books with kids.
But who could have imagined that project would involve 4,569 pounds of gently used and new books restocking the shelves of libraries and classrooms in two schools in Hurricane Katrina-ravaged New Orleans?
wonderful thing.”
The idea for collecting and sending books to New Orleans in Reagan's memory started with Nancy Cooper, organist and choir director at Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, where Reagan served as coordinator of the acolyte program.
As a native of Shreveport, La., Cooper had watched her brother lose his home in Buras, south of New Orleans, to Hurricane Katrina and wanted to do something more than send a check. In January, Cooper and her daughter, Beth, 16, watched a news program on CNN that showed classrooms strewn with moldy, rotten books.
“Pulling our favorite books off our shelves or buying copies of them from used bookstores seemed so much more personal to us,” Cooper said. “We felt we were really giving something and thought, ‘How hard could it be to put books in boxes and mail them?' ”
Thus began the first of eight months of e-mail between Cooper and the Recovery School District in New Orleans. Parishioners at Holy Spirit Parish began boxing up books in memory of their beloved acolyte director.
Big Sky became involved in March, and the school's Key Club coordinated a Books for Barb Drive. The club put a large cardboard box outside each English classroom and students began dropping in books by the pound.
“They raided their closets and bookshelves for books they had read when they were little kids,” said Kim Lucostic, Key Club adviser and English and journalism teacher. “They went through their parents' and brothers' and sisters' books.”
The students responded because Reagan had always responded so positively to them, said Lucostic. As the librarian in charge of issuing the audio-visual equipment to Lucostic's broadcast journalism students, “Barb was always happy, always kind, no matter what the kids did to the cameras. ... She could always find something positive to say,” Lucostic said.
As the bags and boxes of books accumulated in the halls of Big Sky and the garage outside Holy Spirit Parish, Cooper wrestled with how to pay for shipping the steadily growing mountain of books.
When the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation stepped forward to cover the shipping costs, and U-Haul and Rocky Mountain Moving and Storage/Allied Van Lines each donated about two dozen moving boxes, it was time for volunteers to sort, group and pack boxes for the ride to New Orleans aboard Allied Van Lines.
Many of the books were just the kinds of modern and classic literature Reagan loved. There were full sets of the “Harry Potter” and “Little House on the Prairie” series, along with the complete works of William Shakespeare. For younger readers, there were copies of “Clifford the Big Red Dog,” “Corduroy” and “Captain Underpants.”
Six weeks after the start of the 2007-08 school year, more than 2 tons of books were delivered to two schools in the Recovery School District, Fannie C. Williams Elementary and Livingston Elementary and High schools.
For Kelly Batiste, principal of Fannie C. Williams Elementary, a pre-kindergarten through sixth-grade school in northeastern New Orleans, the boxes of books from Missoula were the first donations received from outside the area.
“The fact that these were the first donations that we have had made them even more special to us. They told us that people didn't forget about us here in New Orleans,” Batiste said.
Batiste said sometimes that's easy to do. The school is a series of modular trailers tucked behind what remains of the old schoolhouse, destroyed in the storm, that served grades six through eight. With a redesigned school using the same name of a local African-American educator, Batiste and her staff are working hard to build a new, positive culture of learning, with an emphasis on literacy.
Thanks to the books, said Batiste, “the teachers are excited to have the additional resources and are so grateful.” Some of the books have been distributed directly to the students and others, in the modular library and classrooms, are now coming out of the boxes as new bookshelves are constructed.
The needs at Fannie C. Williams remain great: everything from school supplies such as pens, folders, paper and composition notebooks to brown or black belts and white socks to complete students' school uniforms. Troy Peloquin, a volunteer and donations coordinator for the Recovery School District, said schools throughout the district still need art supplies and musical instruments.
But, said Peloquin, “you can never have too many books in a school,” a sentiment to which Barb Reagan, a true lover of students and books, would have given her brightest smile.
Lucia Solorzano is a longtime member of Holy Spirit Episcopal Church and a Missoula writer. Reach her at hsparish@montana.com.
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