Michael Gillespie:
CLASS OF 1967
Forest Park High SchoolClass of 1967
Beaumont, TX
Michael's Story
As published in the Beaumont Enterprise on Mother's Day, May 11, 2005:
When I was a child, my mother would take me to the children's room on the second floor of the old Tyrrell Public Library on Saturday mornings. Up the creaking steps of the winding wooden staircase we would go, my hand in hers until I was old enough to make the climb on my own, into a spacious room filled with children's tables, chairs, and books, books, books. The first books I remember are "Make Way for Ducklings" and "The Little Engine that Could." By the time I arrived at the library in the early 1950s, a collection of stereoscopic viewers and stereo-view cards - popular technology at the turn of the century - had been relegated to the children's department. I spent hours transfixed by fin-...Expand for more
de-siecle scenes from around the world, transported back in time to exotic locales. The library was a place of wonder, and of reverence for reading and learning.
Decades later, when work took me to New England, there in the Boston Public Garden were Robert McCloskey's famous ducklings, cast in bronze. I liked the Boston area so much I spent six years across the river in Cambridge at Harvard, then lived, worked and traveled in Europe before returning to the States.
Today, I write for a Washington, D.C., magazine edited and published by retired U.S. foreign service officers. For me, the journeys of a lifetime began with a mother who taught me to love books, reading, and learning. That's made all the difference.
Michael Gillespie, a former Beaumonter now in Iowa
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