A Retired Teacher Shares Her Life-Long Love of Libraries

From Public Broadcasting wbfo, Mildred Blaisdell remembers spending afternoons in the late 50’s and 60’s at the B.F. Jones Memorial Library, particularly in the summertime.

There wasn’t much air conditioning in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania in the late 50’s and early 60’s. But the library was a haven of coolness on hot, humid afternoons.

The B.F. Jones Memorial Library was a classy robber baron equivalent of “My parents went to the beach and all I got was this tee shirt.” While my grandfathers were working in the Jones and Laughlin Steel MIll for low wages, the Jones and the Laughlins built lovely granite public libraries for the use of the families of their underpaid workers. The library was the most beautiful edifice in town.