Volunteer ‘moles’ aren’t keen about leaving their HQ in the Lakewood Library basement
Leslie McAntosh is “head of the Mole Patrol.”
She told me as much Thursday morning, on an elevator ride down to the basement of the Lakewood Library.
The basement of the library is where McAntosh’s moles work.
It’s underground.
Get it?
Currently, there are 28 moles, and most have comfortably passed retirement age. They’re volunteers who gather in the basement every Thursday around 8 a.m., before getting to work sorting and organizing a constant flow of donated books, McAntosh said.
The moles — as they came to be known at some point over the years, though no one is precisely sure when — are more formally the nonprofit Friends of the Lakewood Library.
While nearly every one of the Pierce County Library System’s 20 branches has a Friends group, according to executive director Georgia Lomax, Lakewood’s is particularly unique and longstanding. The group is best known for the twice-yearly book sales it’s held for decades, which annually raise thousands of dollars for the library system.
That’s where the basement comes in:
It’s nearly 5,000 square feet and full of donated books, more than 10,000 of them.
It’s where the famous sales happen.
At least for the time being.
That’s why Marsha Klaas, a particularly outspoken mole, sent me a desperate handwritten letter a few months back.
As Klaas colorfully explained, the moles’ long history of occupying the entirety of the library’s basement is likely coming to an end — and she’s steaming mad about it.
Lakewood might be getting a new library in the coming years, Klaas knows. There’s serious talk of it. A significant renovation also is being considered.
Either way, for the Mole Patrol, Klaas sees the writing on the wall. A chapter is very likely coming to an end, she believes, and she isn’t thrilled about it.
“They want to build the Taj Mahal library,” said Klaas, who has been a mole for the last nine years. “There’s nothing wrong with this library!”
According to Lomax, it’s a bit more complicated than that.
Yes, a new or renovated Lakewood library could mean a loss of space for the moles, though no decision has been made and both possibilities are years down the road at the earliest, she stressed. Right now, the library system is studying its options while engaging with the community — and its various Friends groups — to see what everyone wants, she said.
The same is true in Tillicum and Sumner, two other Pierce County libraries where new facilities are being considered.
In Lakewood — which is the system’s busiest branch, according to Lomax — the issues are predictable and consistent with a building that’s more than 50 years old. The parking isn’t great. There are issues with the plumbing and sewer system. The list goes on.
“Almost 60 years of flushing has taken its toll. We get a lot of flooding from the system. Something needs to happen,” said Lomax. “We’re really good friends with FloHawks at this point, and we’d like to maybe have a little more distance from them.”
Separate from the need for a new or renovated library in Lakewood, the library system, Lomax said, is currently reviewing the space it provides to all Friends groups.
At least in part, the review was inspired by a recent visit by the state auditor’s office, she explained.
The library system wants the distribution of space among volunteer groups to be fair, Lomax said. Plus, state law prohibits public institutions from gifting public resources, so the library system needs to make sure the amount of space each group has is offset by the amount of money it brings in, Lomax added.
“We have a $42 million budget and (Friends of the Lakewood Library) brought in $30,000 last year,” said Pierce County Library System spokesperson Mary Getchell. “We have 20 libraries, 18 of them have Friends groups. Each of those Friends groups raise money that’s important, they advocate for the library system, and they do great work in the community. But the income is certainly not a significant amount, I would say, in a $42 million budget.”
For the Mole Patrol, Lomax said, it means, “In effect, we are gifting public funds to provide that much space.”
“We’re a tax-supported organization, and taxpayers give us their money to provide library services and to maintain the building,” Lomax added. “We cant use tax money to support private organizations, nonprofits or others.”
All of that might be true, but that doesn’t mean all of the moles are ready to turn the page.
It also raises a seemingly valid question:
Why is this coming to a head now?
“Whatever it’s going to be, it’s going to be diminished. I think that’s the key element, and that’s the key word,” said Noel Sheldahl, who has been a mole since 2000.
Sheldahl has a point, and it speaks to the unique history of the Mole Patrol and the evolution of Lakewood’s library.
Until the early 1990s Friends of the Lakewood Library actually owned and operated the facility, which opened in 1963 as the Flora Tenzler Memorial Library. The group supported the operation for years, in large part through the semi-annual book sales in the basement.
The sales, which regularly draw hundreds of people, offer paperbacks for 35-cents a piece and hardbacks for $4 or less. A special emphasis is placed on making sure children’s books are affordable, McAntosh said.
“I enjoy the camaraderie that we have down here. You’re so proud of what you do, especially when there’s a sale, and you see all the people come,” Klaas said. “Everybody down here, we’re like a family.”
Lomax describes it as “a really unique situation.”
Because of the history in Lakewood, the basement the moles occupy is bigger than some Pierce County branches, she noted.
Meanwhile, the group — far and away — has more space than any other Friends group, Lomax said.
The moles readily acknowledge all of this, but that doesn’t make the prospect of change any easier for some of them.
Opinions vary, of course.
McAntosh, for one, intends to “go with the flow,” adding that “you’ve got to be practical.”
Black, on the other hand, recalls visiting the library back in high school in the 1960s.
Black first started volunteering in the mid-1970s, and remembers a time when the moles had just a few shelves in back.
She doesn’t sound ready to go back to those days.
“I understand the building’s old, and it’s going to take a lot to renovate it … but if they do, we’re done, we’re gone,” Black said. “And we’ve put in tons of money to the Pierce County library system.”
“We’ll get maybe a little nook somewhere, like most of them, but no place like this,” she added.
