Middlbury Boys & Girls Club

Congratulations to Carson Simmons on winning Middlebury Club 2020- 2021 Youth of the Year! Carson did a fantastic job sharing his speech with the judges and answering interview questions. We were all very impressed with him! Carson is 15 years old and is in 9th grade at Northridge High School. He has been attending the Boys & Girls Club of Middlebury since 2013 and attends regularly. Carson has been involved in many programs such as our Character & Leadership program: Keystone Club. Carson will now move on to the County-Wide Youth of the Year competition. We are so proud of Carson and excited to see him go through this fun and rewarding program.

Meet Laci Johnson! She is a senior at Northridge High School and chose to complete her work experience class at the Boys & Girls Club. She is doing a fantastic job and our Club members adore her and look forward to seeing her every day. Laci is always ready to work and help however she can. Every Friday Laci runs our Club buck store and does a great job at making it fun for Club members while they learn all at the same time. The Boys & Girls Club of Middlebury is grateful to have Laci as part of their team! BOYS & GIRLS CLUB

By Chris Wheeler, Photos by Linnea Wheeler

Terry Rheinheimer never intended to work in a public library. Her experience was in school and university libraries. Nevertheless, on the first day of January 1979, she found herself single-handedly launching the Middlebury Community Public Library (MCPL). And just recently, at the tail end of December 2020, Terry embarked on a welldeserved retirement from her work as Library Director, having guided the library through just shy of forty-two years of vital service to the community.

Terry was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in a suburb of Miami, which was unserved when it came to libraries. At the time, if you didn’t live in the zip code, you weren’t allowed to use the library, so Terry used and eventually worked at her school library starting in the 6th grade. From there she worked in the library at the University of Florida, where she earned her bachelors in library science and a minor in Latin American Studies.

This latter interest was one of the reasons a flyer for a semester-long study program at the University of the Andes in Colombia caught her eye. The study program was not the only thing at the University of the Andes that caught her eye. It was there that she met her husband, Dennis, who happened to be from a small, snowy town in northern Indiana named Middlebury.

“We always joked that he married me because my family lived in Florida, and we would have a place to go on vacation,” she says with a laugh. Appropriately, when she and Dennis first married and moved to Shipshewana, he owned an ice route. Not long after, he completed his elementary education degree and took a position in South Bend teaching children of migrant workers, then teaching 3rd grade at Harrison Primary Center -- a job he would hold for 30 years.

Even after forty years of frigid Indiana winters, Terry is still tropical at heart. When we talked, she had just arrived for an extended stay with her daughter and 7-month old grandson in Guatemala. When not visiting warmer climates, Terry lives with her other daughter and her two other grandchildren (10 and 6) in Middlebury. Dennis passed away in 2015.

Upon arrival in Indiana, Terry initially took a job in the library at Goshen College, where her boss encouraged her to pursue her masters. She earned her Masters in Library Science at University of Indiana, Bloomington in August of 1978, just in time to take up the mantle of Head Librarian at the newly minted MCPL. At the time, the laws had just been changed to allow smaller towns like Middlebury to have their own libraries, and the people of Middlebury were eager to get started. Accordingly, the library and the community it fostered grew at a rapid pace.

From the beginning, Terry was determined that the library would be both accessible and welcoming. She recalled the university libraries she worked in being very formal and austere, with high desks and strict dress codes.

“We couldn’t change the height of the desks, otherwise adults would be leaning over, but we made the conscious decision to not dress so formally so we could be more approachable… Libraries are confusing to people; we know where everything is, but they don’t. Ever since day one, it’s been: what can we do to make people feel welcome and comfortable? And that’s what we’ve done.” During the pandemic, she and her staff at the library have innovated ways to keep books and resources accessible to patrons, scheduling individual appointments and pickup opportunities -- including packing cheerful bags full of handselected children’s books.

The culture that Terry and her colleagues at the library have worked so hard to develop reflects a guiding principle of librarians: to create and nurture a public space providing unfettered access to information and services for all people. MCPL’s current motto is “Connect, Discover, Explore,” and they provide a safe and open environment in which to do all three of those things. Upholding intellectual integrity and freedom has proven to be revolutionary through the years, such as when librarians across the country spoke up against aspects of the Patriot Act that infringed on their patrons’ privacy and freedom to read and investigate what they wanted. “[For that] we were called subversives... If education is subversive, so be it!”

During her time as Library Director, Terry spearheaded an extensive building project to expand the library into what it is today. She also introduced one of the longestrunning discussion and lecture series in Indiana, the ongoing “Let’s Talk About It!” program, in 1987. This program started out meeting at Berkey’s Country House Restau-

rant, which graciously allowed the participants to use their pop machine free of charge. They had 30 people show up for the first session, and every one of them wanted to do it again. Terry made sure that happened, leveraging overwhelming support from the community, grant money, and collaboration with other libraries to obtain the books they needed to keep going. MCPL’s strategic location made it possible for her to book lecturers from institutions like Notre Dame, Goshen College, IUSB, and Bethel. Terry served for 12 years representing Indiana with the American Library Association on their governing body. She also made multiple trips to Washington, D.C., as part of the Indiana delegation during National Library Legislative Day, and regularly met with both state and federal legislators on issues concerning libraries, such as literacy. According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, around 70% of all incarcerated adults cannot read at a 4th grade level, meaning that prisons can effectively predict future incarceration rates by elementary school literacy tests. “Why don’t we flip that and say, if we know that this many kids are struggling with reading and that’s going to pose a problem for them later on, perhaps our money would be better spent in teaching them how to read.”

For Terry, serving in the library at Middlebury has always been about the people. “I love the number of people that come in and just visit, and tell us that we are a lifeline and a blessing to them. What’s gratifying is when you see some people who you remember as little kids, coming in with their children because it was important to them.” She recalls hearing from one mother who broke the news to her daughter that they were going to Disney World by saying, “Imagine the most exciting place in the world. We’re going to go there on vacation!” Her daughter’s eyes got big and she said, “We’re going to the library?!”

Terry is particularly proud of the collaboration the library has had with other libraries and schools in the area, as well as with the Friends of the Library, Parks, and Museum. Middlebury itself has proven to be a caring, welcoming ally. “I was fortunate to be in a town that supported the library and still does, to work with boards that supported the library, and a great staff. All the stars aligned, and it’s been good. People are good and generous here, and they have been to me and to the library. Forty years, who knew? I look around the library and think, wow, we did this!”

Caption for picture of Terry holding lots of books: Terry has too many favorite books and authors to choose just one! Some of her favorites are mysteries and historical fiction