Bushels of Books Show Literary Charity Isn’t Overdue

As a public service to those who have only so much time on a Sunday morning and don’t know what to read in the paper, this column comes with an early warning device:

If you don’t like the soft stuff, the stuff that talks about the generous, good-hearted side of your fellow humans, don’t bother reading on.

Two Sundays ago this column was about the volunteer efforts of local advertising women Mary Huth and Suzanne Robbins, who thought it would be a good idea to collect children’s books for homeless shelters in Costa Mesa and Long Beach, where they had been volunteering in the past year. Their thinking was that children without permanent addresses have a difficult time getting library cards to check out books.

That struck them as deprivation of a different kind for kids who have been deprived enough.

I had planned to put a one-sentence postscript at the end of today’s column, just to update readers on whatever response the two women got to their appeal for books.

The tally: By conservative count, Huth said, about 1,100 books have been collected. She said about 600 are lying in the reception area of her office, with another 500 in her office. Some people have brought in just one book; one man brought in more than 100.

“There’s everything,” Huth said. “We’ve gotten the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, ‘Bambi,’ lots of Dr. Seuss, ‘Anne of Green Gables,’ which is my personal favorite, ‘Treasure Island,’ ‘Annie Oakley.’ Somebody even threw in some John Steinbeck.”

Aside from just the sheer number of donations, not to mention the reading pleasure they will give the homeless kids, many of the donors had poignant stories about what the books had meant, Huth said.

“The first woman who came in had a Santa cap on and polar bear mittens. She gave me a big hug and called me an angel. She brought 10 brand-new Dr. Seuss books and three beautifully illustrated Aesop’s fables and bookmarks. When I asked her name, she said she was from the North Pole, and that was all she said. She said thank you for the opportunity to give.”

Another woman came in with two large bags of books, Huth said. “She said she lost her job 13 months ago, and her mother had a stroke, and she didn’t have money to give but still wanted to contribute something. She said if I’d let her donate the books, that would be her Christmas present.”

An older man whose wife had died in October had been cleaning out his garage and decided to part with books collected over a lifetime. He gave two boxes full of books, with the oldest bearing a publication date of 1887, Huth said.

In addition to the books that Huth and Robbins had gathered earlier from business associates and friends, the new donations push the number of books toward 2,000, Huth said. A friend of Robbins doing postgraduate work in library science is going to help them organize the books at the shelters.

Robbins, who thought of the library idea, said she hopes that people will continue donating because she and Huth want to expand the books-for-the-homeless idea beyond the two shelters. With a projection of about 500 books for each shelter, they’re hoping to stock at least four shelters in the near future, she said.

“The thing I always said to Mary was that we created this wonderful monster,” Robbins said. “It’s really blossomed into something terrific.”

At the Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter in Costa Mesa, the bookshelves are being readied for the new library. Executive Director Sandee Gordon said the influx of books “just helps the kids all around, not only for the education of learning to read and keeping up with their schoolwork, but also for the fantasies, the excitement, the dreams.”

Huth said it will probably be another couple of weeks before the library is set up at the shelter. “It’s just really exciting to think they’re going to get to know all these great characters I knew when I was growing up: Nancy Drew, ‘The Little Prince’ or ‘Anne of Green Gables,’ ” Huth said. “To think of all the potential they’re going to realize through these books. . . . It’s a cliche but it’s definitely going to expand their horizons.

“People were just really excited and thought it was a great idea. It was overwhelming and encouraging. I sort of had a dim view of Orange County in terms of charity, and to just run into all these people who were so giving was kind of an emotional experience for me.”

A happy ending all round.

Whatever else you make of it, it just seemed to me it was worth more than a one-sentence postscript.