Dale Matlock

TRI-LAKES AREA — Two generations of patrons will gather at the Grant County Library on Monday to share memories, discuss books they have read and celebrate the 24-year career of Dale Matlock, who retired from the library Feb. 1.

“We’re all looking forward to the reception,” said library manager Pam Withers, a veteran of 34 years with the library. “We were supposed to retire together. We always used to say that, but she went first.”

Matlock, who joined the library staff in November 1987, is also getting a head start on her husband, whose retirement from Molex in Maumelle is set for the end of the year.

“He urged me to go ahead and retire,” she said. “He knew I enjoyed being at home and working in the yard. I am also a member of a quilting group, and I’m active in the church.”

For now, Matlock is enjoying a few carefree days before getting involved in any major project.

“Yesterday, I went to a movie in the middle of the day,” she said to her friends and former co-workers at the library on Oak Street in Sheridan. “I’m having a good time not having to be anywhere at any particular time.”

Matlock said she was always told by her co-workers that she spoiled the patrons.

“Often they would come in and ask me to pick them out a book,” Matlock said.

Her favorite recommendation for years has been Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, a novel about the building of a cathedral in the 12th century. The book was published when Matlock had been working at the library for only five years.

“People were always asking about books, and some have said they think we have read every book in the library,” she said. “Many think we just sat here and read all day.”

Among the most enjoyable parts of being a library assistant at the Grant County Library were the summer reading-program events.

“We would keep the kids reading books during the summer,” Matlock said. “We didn’t want them to lose their reading skills.”

One summer the staff covered the library’s parking lot with sand for a beach party and placed small swimming pools around for children who wanted to make a splash.

“Two summers ago, we handed out water guns, and some kids brought their own,” Matlock said. “Some were really water cannons and could shoot 20 feet up in the air and were loaded from a backpack full of water.”

“Dale always got into it,” Withers said.

“What the kids did, I would do,” Matlock said. “If I was not having fun, they were not having fun.”

She said that party had a water theme with books about watercraft, stories that took place on the water and other water-related books.

“One year we had an interpreter from DeGray Lake,” Matlock said. “Another time someone from Arkansas Game and Fish brought an alligator.”

A native of Augusta, Matlock moved to Sheridan in 1974 when her husband took a job with the Rockwell Co.

“If you weren’t born in Sheridan, you were a foreigner,” she said. “But this is home, and we raised our son here. It is more diverse and accepting now.”

Matlock worked 12 years in a small grocery store called Graves Food Market.

“I found I liked working with the public, and I made a lot of friends in town,” she said.

One of the friends was a member of the library’s board of directors. When a job opened at the library, Matlock was recommended for the position.

“When I was first here, we checked out books by hand by stamping a card and putting it in a pocket in the back of the book,” she said. “We were in another building down Oak Street. It was small and dark, and we had about half the books we have now.”

One of the changes Matlockhas seen in the library over the 24 years she has worked there is a shift in the age of the patrons.

“We have a lot more teens coming to the library now,’ she said. “We have always had the preschoolers coming to story time and the adults, but now there are lots of teenagers.”

Librarians attribute the increased teen traffic to the growth of fiction books created for the age group.

“When we saw that happening, we brought in more books that targeted teens,” Mat l o ck said. “The Tw ilig ht series were among the most popular,along with other stories about vampires, zombies and other things.”

Matlock said the library had always tried to get the books the patrons want to read.

“We have a lot of popular fiction and Christian fiction,” she said. “We started getting books on tape, and now we get them on CDs.”

The library has seen more people coming into the library as the economy dipped, Matlock said.

“As people were cutting back, they were not buying as many books or renting movies but were coming here to check things out,” she said.

When these trends come and go, there will always be plenty of children coming to the library, Matlock said.

“We have catered to kids with a story hour for preschool-age kids and the special program for young readers,” she said.

She remembers one young person who was eager to take part in an event.

“We had one little boy who wanted to help out and be a part of the program,” Matlock said. “So we called on him to come up and help the person doing the program. When the guy pulled out a snake, the boy went right back to his seat very quickly.”

Withers said the library workers now see children at the reading programs who are the sons and daughters of the young readers the workers saw when they were first at the library.

Matlock said another important part of her job as a librarian was to help students find the materials they needed for reports and other homework.

“I remember a recent class had to do a report on the monuments in Washington, D.C.,” she said. “I found out a lot of things I didn’t know about some monuments that I had never heard of. I tried to help, but I didn’t do the work for them.”

Matlock said she will enjoy talking with the adults and children who come to the library to honor her on Monday. She said she loved her work in the library, but by Tuesday, she will be checking to see what movies are playing.

Staff writer Wayne Bryan can be reached at (501) 244-4460 or wbryan@arkansasonline.com.

up close

getting to know Dale Matlock

Birth date: May 24, 1950

Birthplace: Augusta

Family: Husband, Ronnie; and son, Kevin

Occupation: Retired library assistant

Biggest influence: My mother

When I was a child, I wanted to be: A homemaker

One thing in life I want to accomplish but have not done yet: Not really anything; I will just see what God calls me to do.

Tri-Lakes, Pages 131 on 02/12/2012

Print Headline: Dale Matlock