Thank you all for being here. It means a lot to me.
I’m grateful to Misty for proposing the idea of this day, and to Councilmember Whitburn for making it happen. He’s been a great friend to the library. We all thank him for that.
Well, for me, it’s been a great run here at Central, these 30 years, beginning as they did during the last century. Last century. Man, that makes me sound old. But as my daughter said, You are old. So, excuse me if I reminisce a little about the library and the Central Friends Board during those years. Not too much. I don’t want Misty to wish she’d just sent me a nice parting gift in the mail and been done with it.
The library has always been important in my life. I spent a lot of my youth in the old Point Loma library. It sat where only grass grows now, next to the new Hervey library. I’d sit in the kid’s area to the left of the entrance, at those miniature tables and chairs. It would take a hoist to lift me out of one of those little chairs now. I remember looking at those thick books in the adult section, dreaming of being grown up enough to read them. I still haven’t read War and Peace. Give me a few years yet, but don’t put any money on it.
I joined the Central Friends board in the early nineties, recruited by Chuck Valverde. Many San Diego book lovers of a certain age remember Chuck and his Wahrenbrock’s Bookstore, nationally known at the time. One day I was browsing there. Chuck said, ”What are you doing at noon, Thursday after next?”, and so I attended my first Friends meeting, a one time courtesy to Chuck. I never could figure out at what point during the meeting it happened, but as I left everyone congratulated me on becoming a board member, and their legal advisor.
I had been on a large local nonprofit’s board and executive committee, dealing with policy and donors, and diffusing a fevered neighborhood dispute. With a Masters in Tax Law, I had set up a few private foundations, along with a church for a client who had devised his own religion. The IRS was suspicious (you think?) but I ultimately got it approved on appeal to the IRS national office. In any case, that was about the extent of my experience.
Chuck soon retired as President and Dick Hanley, truly a gentleman president, took over for a few years. Both terrific. Then, suddenly, by Dick’s design and, again to my surprise, I was president. A little slow on the pickup? I remained so until I just recently stepped down.
All my fellow board members were great to work with: Frank Goldstein, Horace, with his bolo ties and country porch manner, Nancy, as proper as a library recital. Frank, a New Yorker to the bone, was national tax controller for Saks in New York before he retired. He always came to meetings full of creative ideas, from the sublime to the cockamamie- like his library cart selling trinkets he probably purchased at the final closeout of a bankrupt flea market. What my mom used to call crapola. Needless to say, we sold very few of those trinkets, but I think we still turned a small profit.
At the time we really had to scramble for funding sources. We didn’t have the kind of income for program funding that our book sales generate today.
So if any of you should happen to find a box with the rest of those trinkets stashed somewhere, we wrote them off a long time ago, so go for it. They make great host or hostess gifts. Frank would be the first to say so.
I spent many years as a board member over at the old Central Library on E Street. Not Springsteen’s E Street, but having said that, Darkness on the Edge of Town and Better Days- the song titles at least- do come to mind. It was nice to see the property fixed up to house homeless women, with thanks to Councilmember Whitburn’s work. I hope that next year that, or a similar use, can continue.
One of the terrific things about being on the Friends board at E Street was that I got to check out the old library’s mysterious basement, accessible only to library employees. I was excited when I had a reason to go down there. It turned out to be a lot of packed bookshelves, fairly well lit, low ceiling, some pipes, but not the dark musty chamber I had imagined – a place where long deceased librarians floated over old rickety floors. That would be the Ocean Beach library.
I got to be good friends with Dan Weinberg, then head of major gifts for the city. Big gifts came through him, not just money, but art, and the library benefited from both. The art came in mostly due to Mark Lugo. He organized artist shows at the library. When possible, he would persuade the artist to donate one of their pieces in connection with their show, and collectors also donated. Our meetings during those days provided a constant education, because of the topics that we covered and the experts associated with them. A huge thanks to both Dan and Mark.
As I said, the old E Street library was not in the best part of town then, and as president, this became a topic of concern and conversation. It got so bad that many patrons were afraid, or at least reluctant, to come. Frank and I thought a coffee cart out there would help. So, I wrote a memorandum of understanding with the city, and we got a vendor to rent space just outside the front door. He put up little tables and chairs in a roped area and It actually did clear up the front, for a while anyway. People came from nearby offices, often during lunch. Library staff loved the coffee – but with no security, business fell off. Using our broad discretion, I put in the memorandum: I told the nervous vendor, forget the rent for now. Try some adjustments and let’s see if we can make this work. Get enough patrons around and it will feel like a café.
But we couldn’t get there and maybe six months later they had to close down for good. So, in the end, not a success but not a fool’s errand, either. I did what I could. We were always trying to do innovative things to help the library and weren’t about to give up.
Finally, with Deborah Barrow then Misty leading the charge, the city got the library it deserves.
It was a pleasure to be involved with the planning of the new library in various ways- like helping find and select the quotes you see on the side of the building, drawing up legal documents, like a promissory note between the Foundation and the Friends groups for the new Library Shoppe with enough flexibility to make it work, and serving on various planning committees for both the shop and the new library. It’s a wonderful library, befitting a city of our size, and its dome, modeled, I understand, on the arboretum in Balboa Park, is now iconic.
I worked with some great staff liaisons, deputy directors, in my early years, including Helga Moore, Christine Siegal, Bruce Johnson. I actually tried to retire once, about 10 or 15 years ago, when my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, but Christine said no, there was too much going on, so I took a few months off, and once my wife was stabilized, I resumed my role as President, with my wife’s blessing and encouragement. Vicky is here today with me. I mentioned to her that I was going to ask her to stand up. She said thanks, but I don’t think so, so we won’t go there.
In my more recent years, our Board worked with Misty, then with Jennifer. While serving as our liaison at our monthly meetings, they each cooked up a southern style stew of relevant library business, in a tomato base, a little okra, served up with their “fine” southern accents and topped off with their “fine” Southern charm. Very filling. They were followed in that position by Monnee, also knowledgeable and charming, but with absolutely NO trace of a southern accent. Misty, Jennifer, and Monnee, you are the best. Thank you so much. I’ve also been lucky to work with Bob, Raul, Ady, Marc, Rick and now Matt, Pete, Joan, Ann, Jay, Emily, Vanessa, Charlie, Laurie, Catherine and so many of you I have worked with over the years. I am so thankful to have had great library staff to work with. It kept me going for thirty years, as did our board.
Our small board has always been the little engine that could, and it still is. I’m so grateful to my fellow board members: Lynn, who, fortunately for the board, took over as president when I left. She has been my right hand ever since she joined, which is a good thing because I’m left handed. But truly, she has been irreplaceable and from her start has been a terrific president; Rosemary, who besides taking our minutes has also stepped in wherever she was needed. She’s been our utility infielder who covers so much ground for us. Nothing gets past her; and then there is Zoe, who unfailingly knows what it takes for us to get ahead, expertly attracting donors, members, and contributors. She organizes and runs very popular author luncheons, and is our author laureate; and there is Vera, who has long been a champion of the Waggenheim rare book collection, and has recruited a new treasurer for the board, for which we are eternally grateful. I’d also like to give a shoutout and thank you to Leslie, our new treasurer- we went over some Treasurer matters as she was starting and I can already tell she will be thorough and spot on – and to our other new board members, Sarah and Deanna, thank you both and welcome to the Board. My thanks to Jeff, who coordinates and has done a great job to improve the bookstore, Lisa, who expertly runs online sales, and Scott, who goes above and beyond his daily job running the library shoppe to help us, and always contributes. They have been a consistent strength. Thank you all. I miss you all.
The Board and library staff, like most of us, don’t run on empty stomachs. I have tried over the years to provide fuel by bringing sandwiches. Despite my best intentions, I often seemed to come up short with the ever-popular tuna or veggie sandwiches, although I did have some fickle eaters, who would change things up on occasion to throw me off. Still, for those of you who didn’t get the sandwich you wanted, I’m sorry about that.
Sandwiches aside, a real highlight at the Board meetings was to hear from staff about, and help fund, the many programs and supplies that the Central library was able to provide to the community. I don’t know how much money we’ve donated to the Foundation, but again, it’s a lot, like the $30,000 we gave at last year’s fiscal year-end that Ann guilted us into, to complete the match. We pledged 10. She called me up that Saturday. Leaned into me pretty hard. We gave thirty. There goes the Steven Klug Memorial Utility Closet. Just doing her job.
With our board, I have always tried to be innovative in service of the library and its mission. I had proposed to the board we sponsor some programs in a few of the less supported branches, but it turned out Misty, always several steps ahead, was already hard at work achieving that funding by adjusting the match fund allocation, and of course, with the support the city council provides for our libraries, she achieved it. Libraries are one of our most democratic institutions, serving the broad spectrum of society, and we also feel that responsibility.
One part of the library especially meaningful to me is the Pauline Foster Teen Center, in Honor of Stanley, her late husband. Pauline and Stanley Foster were among my parents’ closest friends and lived around the corner. She was my Aunt Pauline. He was Uncle Stanley, who instilled in me from a young age the need to do volunteer work throughout my life. The teen center serves teens from all sectors of society, but I’ve been especially moved by hearing how the library has helped the homeless kids who pass through its doors. We meet their staff’s needs, as we do for all other departments.
With the Friends’ support, staff has provided these vulnerable teens with nutritious snacks, tutoring, clothing, feminine supplies, access to technology, and above all, a safe place.
I focus on the importance of the teen center for homeless teens because of a long-standing interest and concern I have had for this population. Over forty years ago I was one of three in the first volunteer team dedicated to reaching San Diego’s homeless teenagers. Walking the streets at night, searching abandoned buildings and the darkness of the park, we brought supplies to kids on the run, often from abusive situations, which shadowed their days and chased away their dreams at night. For too many, drained of trust, they were hard pressed to accept the safety of a bed in a teen shelter.
Sandi McBrayer, who taught at the shelter then and later won national teacher of the year, started what is now the Monarch School in San Diego for kids K-12, the only such school for homeless kids in the country I believe, a few years after our outreach started. The Monarch School has about 300 students now, but the need is far greater.
While I believe that the homeless teens in the library are for the most part attached to generally nonabusive homeless families, not the runaways I encountered on the streets at night, my outreach experience precipitated my interest in this vulnerable teen population. The availability of the library, an attentive caring staff, and third floor social and referral services, as a safe place for kids, cannot be overestimated.
While support of the teen center and homeless teens is particularly meaningful to me, I am proud of the breadth of support we provide to all aspects of the library. For example, over the years, the Central Friends has paid for rare books, technical books, kids books and other books. We purchased a 3-D printer and ongoing supplies. Two teenagers used the printer to make a prosthetic arm for someone born with a disability, others made hospital masks during the early days of COVID when such masks were in short supply. This was funded by the Foundation. Central Friends has also paid for event refreshments, piano tunings and performance fees, the film series we used to support in the old E Street auditorium, speaker honorariums, Zoe’s author luncheons, San Diego authors, reading prizes for kids, kids’ story times, and so much more, activities as alive as the books they revolve around, all of which help make our library the vital living breathing organism that it is.
Our library offers a diversity of opinions, and the facts on which to appraise them, to all who are in the process of forming opinions of their own, and it offers this knowledge without judgment of those who seek it. In my opinion, the wish of some to circumvent this to force a desired result is antithetical to our library’s mission and values and to our democracy. When I was in law school, a wise teacher taught me to develop a full-throated argument for both sides of a dispute to the best of my ability, regardless of the side I was on, and it remains invaluable advice for law and for life, especially during these hyperpartisan times, when discourse regularly falls outside the bounds of civility, becoming instead a blind anger that precludes commonality and connection. Politically motivated positions become devastatingly personal, while those who wish to curate our libraries guided primarily by fear or prejudice, vested interests or self-righteousness, only perpetuate the same.
Our collection of books and our programs, as a repository of information and humanity in all their diversity, are sacrosanct. Misty, through her eloquent words and actions, and with the support of our Library Board, continues to be their guardian.
I have been fortunate to have had my hand in so many facets of the library over these thirty years. There have been a lot of changes over this time. In the 90’s, Chuck, Frank, and Dick all retired. About a decade later, in 2007, Helga, Anna Tatar and I attended Frank’s funeral. So many stories there brought a smile even to his wife Hellie’s face. Chuck died a year later, and then Dick, after that. I realize this makes it sound like this job has a certain finality to it, but I don’t want to scare off any future takers. Chuck, Frank, and Dick all lived long, productive lives. It has always been important to me that we remember their service to the library, and so as the new library was being built, I asked the Central Friends to remember the three of them, by purchasing memorial bricks in their memory. And so I remember them now, and thank them once again.
One final thing. Not long ago, our former treasurer sadly found the cloud of dementia settling over him. He found himself unable to prepare the monthly financial report and was planning to quit, expressing the frustration and despair he was feeling.
It took me back to when I was a boy, my father, president of the California Heart Association, suddenly finding himself dying of bone cancer. His board of fellow physicians would not let him resign, but instead stepped in to support him. And how much that meant to me, a scared kid, watching the father he idolized try at first to fight like hell, for all he’d worked so hard to become, for my mom, my sister, for me. But, well over fifty years ago now, when cancer treatment was in its infancy, my dad knew what the outcome would be. He was too good a doctor not to. If only one could have wished it otherwise. I still feel his presence, his presence and his absence.
My father had started from nothing, but he built such a full life: family, friends, a large practice as a highly respected cardiologist. Illness can take away so much, so fast, but there are some things you build that can’t be taken away. My dad did so much for so many. I have tried to be like that too.
As I watched our treasurer express so many of the same feelings my father felt, I wanted to provide a small amount of the comfort my dad’s heart association board gave him. And so, I quietly prepared the financials and our treasurer continued to present them, and together, we prepared his annual report, which he then submitted.
I recall this seeking no praise. I mention it to you only as a reflection on how, as a person spends their life, they also build it, and, as my father did, tries to imbue that life with some meaning.
My service here has been important to me as I’ve built my life. It has helped give it meaning. I’m proud to have been a member of the Central Friends’ board, proud to have been its President, and, if you’ll indulge me, in a larger sense, proud to have been one of you, who work day after day to make this library what it is. And it’s a great library. For that privilege, I am incredibly grateful, and for that reason, this recognition comes today full of meaning for me. And that’s because it comes from all of you.
Thank you.
Steve Klug
07/31/2023