A Touching Bequest from a Loyal Town Librarian

Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 12/18/2007 10:54:00 AM

Last week, the Williamsburg, MA, director of libraries and her husband poured a champagne toast to the late town librarian Evelyn R. Kmit—for two very good reasons.

First, Kmit, who was born and raised in Williamsburg, recently bequeathed the local Meekins Library $300,000, to be used for the promotion of reading among the town's (population 2,500) children.

And, second, library director Lisa Wenner and her husband, Bob Buchell, had put some facts together and realized that their 100-year-old home was once the farmhouse where Kmit herself grew up. "When we found out, we toasted Evelyn's generosity of spirit and love for her hometown in our kitchen, where she once stood," Wenner says.

"She was the librarian here in the late 1940s and early 1950s; and there are people we know in town who remember coming in to sign up [with Kmit]," Wenner says. Some of them remembered Kmit during the library's 100th-anniversary celebration in 1997.

In Massachusetts, libraries are a community responsibility, funded by local taxes levied by an annual town meeting. So Williamsburg's bequest is reason for particular local pride. "We were overwhelmed and overjoyed and [thought] what a wonderful gift to make and receive at this time of the year," Wenner says.

The use of the Kmit Memorial Trust Fund for children's awareness is particularly apt, since the Meekins Library is also the school library for local children in grades K–6.

Kmit, who died in Peoria, AZ, on November 5, at age 89, and was a physical education and sports coach in the local schools, made the gift in honor of her children, Chester Jon Kmit and Sandra Bernier Kmit, who both predeceased her.

It's an amazing thing to happen," Wenner says of the bequest. "Not anything that anyone expects, but a great, great gift."