Anne Walker Cleveland (interviewed by Lisa Hayes and Jessica Mischener on August 21, 2023)

Anne Walker Cleveland (interviewed by Lisa Hayes and Jessica Mischener on August 21, 2023)

2023-08-21

Anne Walker Cleveland was born in New Haven, Connecticut, where her father served as a professor at Yale University. She studied at Smith College, and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa for her work in history. She married Will Cleveland, an attorney, and they lived in Charlottesville, VA, San Francisco, CA and returned to SC in 1983, where they raised their three children in Charleston. Anne taught history and English Literature at Charleston Day School for many years before becoming Executive Director of the Library in 2009. She served as Executive Director until her retirement in 2023 as we celebrated our 275th year!

Hayes, Lisa

Mischner, Jessica

Cox, Danielle

MP3

Audio

English

AnneCleveland_OralHistory_20230821

1:00:41

0:00:00 Jessica Mischner

Amazing. Okay.

0:00:21 Anne Cleveland

So, whatever you want. Figuring in on an hour.

0:00:22 Jessica Mischner

Yeah, we'll keep it to an hour or less. This is Jessica Mishner. It's 2:09, Monday, August 21st with Anne Cleveland and Lisa Hayes. We're on the record. If we need to go off the record we will pause it and we will all be respectful of that and we're so excited to have you here.

0:00:42 Anne Cleveland

We can dispense with that.

0:00:44 Jessica Mischner

We're being so professional. So Anne, you and I talked a lot in the past and even before I was here and after I was here about this place and kind of your time coming here and what it was like for me as I went back and like I said look at the 20 pages that I've transcribed from our interview in 2020 which was really about sort of coming over from Charleston Day but like it was just it was it was the big overview of your time here up until that point and we were midway through the pandemic so we could probably pick up after that and look at sort of how you guys fared during that. And I also want to cover the next chapter and all of those big campaigns and I think that's really important for the history of the library society but the one thing that I kept thinking about as I was listening back to our conversation and thinking about all the things I learned from you was what it was like to build a team here. What it was like to come into this team. What it was like to kind of come into this place that you know you not only restructured physically right with stacks in the front room and dearness said hurricane man but but what it was like to rethink the way that people would engage with the library society on a community level. I think, Lisa and I were talking about, really briefly this morning, we're going to need to do two parts of this, we hope you'll agree to. But the big picture stuff is really the history and your time here and what your vision was, but also what the implementation of that was like when it comes to curation of the team and the catalog and then community engagement, really making the place Charleston's living room and building the legacy that we kind of get to take away. So I'd like to start there. I'd like to start with, well, it was like coming in here and we could start with your first day, but just recreating this space for other people to come into, 'cause this was hidden in plain sight, right? And people weren't engaging with it. So what was it like to come in here and decide or see something that didn't exist, which was a community space?

0:03:21 Anne Cleveland

Well I think I would have to step back by a month. The beginning of July, Steve Gates, you've heard the story, invited me to go have lunch with him. And since we were social friends, the idea that it wasn't Laura and Steve and Will and me, I thought, "This is different." He started telling me all about his having gone on the board of the Library Society, which as a former history teacher and somebody who had lived here decades longer than he had, was embarrassing that I had no idea what the Library Society was. I knew where it was, but I had never set my foot through the door. I thought he was crazy, but he said, "We have a speaker tomorrow night, Dottie Frank, and I'd love you and Will to come." I walked in and it was dark and dank, and the executive director had gone and gotten a big plastic platter of cheese cubes and vegetables and just took the top off.

0:04:55 Jessica Mischner

It was upstairs?

0:04:56 Anne Cleveland

Mm-hmm.

0:04:57 Jessica Mischner

Okay.

0:04:58 Anne Cleveland

But there were probably 16 chairs set up between the existing steel stacks that broke up the floor. So clearly it was not going to be a big crowd. Janice was working that night. He greeted Will because he had handled the law work getting the—determining whether or not the news—or the news and couriers copy of the Declaration of Independence had been stolen from our collection.

0:05:39 Jessica Mischner

So this was 2009? In 2009, okay.

0:05:41 Anne Cleveland

And Will had been involved with that litigation. So we walk in and Janice says, "Hello Mr. Cleveland." I, the history teacher who taught a block away, had never set foot in the place and yet here's this gal who knows Will. I later said, "How in the hell did..." You know. But she was very formal, as you could imagine. And we sat down, Dottie Frank was probably one of the most entertaining speakers you could have ever asked for. So it was a fun evening. But there were mostly board members who'd been asked to please show up, Ben Moore and others, others because Steve was in charge of finding the replacement for the executive director. And Steve had said, "Just come look at it and don't make a decision." Because I was saying, "This makes no sense." And I just saw such potential that I couldn't help myself.

0:06:57 Jessica Mischner

In what?

0:06:58 Anne Cleveland

Well, just the space. I mean, it was beautiful. Anything lined with books is going to be attractive, but it was so chopped up and forbidding, which it shouldn't have been. I mean, I just, I didn't know anything about its history yet, but I just felt that it had a lot of potential. And when he explained, not in full detail, all the challenges there were, I'm not sure I would have taken it on. But it just, I was flailing around looking for something to do. I had left Charleston Collegiate and had told the law school I was going to cut back on the number of days that I taught writing at the law school so that I would be able to go see grandchildren and stuff like that. But it just was too good an offer. So I was then interviewed more formally by Will's law partner, whose office was next door to Will's for 20 years, and Ben Moore then hired me, and it was going to start August 1st. The outgoing executive director who had only been there, I think, fifteen months, was moving on to the State Archives, if you had the State Archives. I'm sure that certainly in terms of prestige that was far greater, but from my perspective you're going to give up this to move to Columbia?

0:08:45 Jessica Mischner

(laughing) Such a Charlestonian thing to say.

0:08:50 Anne Cleveland

Well, but I came via Columbia. So anyway, I accepted and then started reaching out to Eric to please, I'd love to meet him and find out what the hell I was gonna be doing. 'Cause I've been in charge of everything on a family level, finances everything for my whole adult life. And I was academic dean at the day school, but I was, I had never been an executive director. I don't like being a boss, as you know, so I wasn't going to be looking at it that way, but I still needed to know what he thought. And I asked him if I could meet him the following Monday, and he said he didn't know. And I thought, well, so I just came in the entire month of July I came every day hoping he would come meet with me. And Janice would have to Janice and Debbie would kind of talk to me and I'd ask them questions. But I would wait back in the Bischoff Lounge, which had two sofas and two chairs. And that was all. There was a card table with a Keurig that Ben Moore had bought. It was bleak. And of course, I felt disoriented just coming from the main building. But I would sit there and wait. And his office was locked. It was always locked and the door closed. And weeks went by and I felt incredibly frustrated that I wasn't going to be able to hit the ground running on August 1st, especially since I had a grandchild due, I think Anna was due that summer. Anyway, I would try to ask Janice questions, but he was still her boss technically. She and Debbie were absolutely discreet and professional and not forthcoming. But finally, about Wednesday of the last week before I was gonna be starting the following week, She saw me, I mean, I was almost teary that I just–

0:11:31 Jessica Mischner

Did he just not come into work?

0: 11:35 Anne Cleveland

Yeah, he was packing up his house.

0:11:37 Jessica Mischner

Okay, yeah.

0:11:38 Anne Cleveland

And she called him and said, she at least needs to see the office where she's gonna be, that she has asked me repeatedly, and so I'm going to unlock the door and let her see. And he came within 15 minutes, and he spent an hour with me showing me how to turn on the computer. But that was about it.

0:12:06 Jessica Mischner

Do you remember what Ben Moore asked you in your job interview?

0:12:11 Anne Cleveland

No. I mean, we'd been social friends for 30 years.

0:12:16 Lisa Hayes

Was it scary or not having much direction, or was it sort of free to know that you were, you could mold this place into whatever you wanted?

0:12:29 Anne Cleveland

I never even thought about that. I already had. My mind was reeling with what I was thinking.

0:12:36 Lisa Hayes

You knew what you wanted to do?

0:12:39 Anne Cleveland

Yeah. But I had no idea who carried our insurance, how to log into the computer. I had no clue how I was going to do that. And he was not helpful at all. But fortunately, Rob Silva was—who had had to be brought on as a full-time staff person because it was just Carol who had announced that she was going to retire. Kelly-Carroll Jones, head librarian announced when they announced that I was coming on that she was going to leave Janice.

0:12:24 Jessica Mischner

No relation, just timing?

0:13:31 Anne Cleveland

Well I think she had been so unhappy. She had been unhappy. Everybody had been unhappy apparently but I didn't know that. But the idea that I was going to lose the head librarian I'd only had an hour hour and a half max with my predecessor, I just wanted to be able to be comfortable with that kind of stuff. And I didn't need insurance because Will's law firm, Ben Moore's firm, was a very good coverage, whereas the library is not all that good. It's better now, but Not good. So they couldn't keep Janice with insurance unless there were at least two people. Because Debbie was covered through her husband.

0:14:19 Lisa Hayes

So how small, the staff was just like Rob, Debbie, Janice, and you?

0:14:24 Anne Cleveland

And Carol.

0:14:26 Lisa Hayes

And Carol.

0:14:26 Anne Cleveland

Yeah.

0:14:27 Jessica Mischner

And Carol's going to take you all over.

0:14:29 Anne Cleveland

Carol's insurance was through the state government when she had taught, when it had been librarians in public schools, which was much better. So Janice and Eric, who had Eric, his wife, and two children, had enabled them to be covered. But when he left, and I wasn't gonna take insurance, they needed another person. So Rob was promoted from student assistant who did the computer, he was the IT and he covered Saturdays with Debbie. So that's how we expanded. And I immediately began begging Carol not to retire. And she finally decided that I was not gonna be the Marine that Eric had been and that it would be okay to stay on. Yeah. Oh God. Well, she's also a close friend of Janice's and she was gonna go work at some craft. I mean, it wasn't like–

0:15:39 Jessica Mischner

She was nervous though.

0:15:40 Anne Cleveland

It wasn't like Anna Smith's.

0:15:45 Anne Cleveland

Oh, Joyce. It wasn't like Joyce, but it was gonna be something like that. But she just was ready to get out of the library society. But anyway, so that's--

0:15:56 Jessica Mischner

How long had Carrol been here, I'm sorry.

0:15:58 Lisa Hayes

I don't know.

0:15: 59 Anne Cleveland

She'd been here, I think, five years. She overlapped with Cathy Sadler. But there'd been a big crew under Cathy, which is why they were hemorrhaging money. But anyway, so that's how I started. But from day one, I knew that it was only gonna be successful as I tried to learn about the Library Society if we were an equal team. I would spend a lot of time up front just asking questions and blowing the dust off the -- and that's when Janice asked me the famous question, "Have they told you all of your duties ?" duties.

0:16:49 Jessica Mischner

Wait, so Anne, before, because I want to pick right back up there, but there is something about people who kind of build something from something, but really turns out it was actually almost nothing when they built it, where there's a little bit it's not a naive day but it's just you don't know how hard it could have been like you just don't see how hard it was until you look back on it right like you come in and you just all you see is potential but you don't even stop to think that it might fail or oh my god like this could be the worst thing I've ever done you don't see the other side and it seems like there was never going to be another. You came in with that and you just came in and the only possibility was success. Right?

0:17:50 Anne Cleveland

Well the the only way was up. The fact that I really love history. The fact that I'd never come was shocking to me as I started to learn what this collection had and the history of the libraries to say I had no idea it was that old. I mean it just floored me that there was such a significant historical, not just facility, but entity that I would not have known about and that nobody seemed to know about it except a a few old South and Broad types. So to me, anything was going to be an improvement, which it was. I did challenge the board because I immediately realized that the membership was tiny and very exclusive. And I said, "I want to open the doors and invite anybody in and everybody in." And that means Jewish people, black people, Asian people, poor people, you know, across the board.

0:19:19 Jessica Mischner

Young people.

0:19:20 Anne Cleveland

And they said, "Go for it." I mean, fortunately, Steve said, "Go for it." And so just immediately trying to, one, learn the history, and two, start reimagining use of space, and then three, getting my children's friends, contemporaries, and all my former students who were old enough to, "You need to come learn about the Library Society," what helped sort of launch my first year. There was just, there were so many things that you could begin to check off. Well I've gotten lots of people to know that I'm here and, you know, and I write lots of letters.

0:20:14 Jessica Mischner

The low hanging fruit is that Janice tells you, "I need you to know what you've gotten yourself into." So describe the conversation. This is lore around here.

0:20:26 Anne Cleveland

Well, no, it's not lore. It is the truth. Because she is so professional and so discreet that I kept saying... She kept asking, "Did they really tell you all the things that you're responsible for?" And I'm thinking, she's uptight because I'm not a librarian. Not a librarian. It's the first time there has never been, well, Eric, but he kind of doesn't almost count, that there hasn't been a librarian who's in charge of the second oldest circulating library in America. So I was very defensive in trying to explain, "Well, there's more to it. They want me to try to increase memberships and have programming and whatever I think of, get more young people in. And she said, yeah, but did they tell you everything? And I would say, well, they explained this. And I just kept feeling like she was questioning whether I even had a brain in my head, but it was just her sense of humor. And she finally said, did they tell you that one of the things Eric did to save money was to fire the cleaning staff and the librarians clean the floors and the bathrooms on Wednesday mornings. And I said, no.

0:22:01 Jessica Mischner

I'm taking them off of my bag right now that I'm taking them to watch. I'm so very much appreciating this.

0:22:06 Anne Cleveland

No, they never mentioned that. And when she and I finished that particular discussion, I went straight back to my desk and hired a cleaning crew from who'd been doing the cleaning at Charleston Collegiate. So, yeah. But that first Friday, I invited everybody to come have a drink at our house, 'cause we're only a few blocks away. So we closed early, which was fine on a Friday 'cause nobody was in here. So I had fixed hors d'oeuvres and Will had, you know, bar set and of course Janice doesn't we drink, Rob did. Carol had a glass of wine and Debbie brought George. I mean, I'd invited Jimmy of course, but I'd never met Jimmy and it was years before I finally did meet Jimmy. But George came and of course George is so entertaining. Well, we sat around probably for two or more hours, which was just so much fun. But I think they finally really believed that my approach was, I'm deferring to you all, to be my guides. I'm gonna ask you whether you think it's a good idea, but I've got lots of ideas and I will defend my ideas, but I'm not gonna be dictatorial. And so from there on, in fact, I didn't remember it as clearly obviously as Janice is, but she really, I think, went home crying a lot of days, mostly because she doubted her own abilities because I was trying to get her to use the computer programs for all of the bookkeeping. She still does everything by hand in addition is still more thorough than anybody you could ever want. But I, she was always so generous that when I had said I really want to bring in my grandmother's piano and could we dismantle all of these bookcases because a lot of the stacks were the shelves were half full, quarter full, some were full, but they weren't all packed. And I just threw that out and I came back around lunchtime and there was Rob with screwdriver and wrench dismantling and Carol had already moved that whole 10-foot steel bookcase. I don't know where she had moved the books, books, but they were already starting. I went, "Whoa! " I mean, I had thrown it out and she said, "Well, you wanted to know. The only way to know." Of course, then I had to get a floor man in because the stains from over a hundred years of those steel bookcases with rust and everything, but gave us an excuse to then really clean and buff the floor. Oh, it looked so pretty the first time.

0:25:32 Jessica Mischner

I think too it speaks to outside I mean in a lot of ways this place still is a gem hidden in plain sight right but I mean inside it's always a congenious chipped in she says 20 bucks among three people for the first microwave that was ever in this place. I mean inside it's always been a culture of just like sort of dogged and dogmatic I mean appreciation you know I mean this place doesn't continue for 275 years just because these men had a vision you know Thomas Jefferson was for it continues on because we all still believe right and and I think getting other people in here who believe but just the idea that a teen, no matter how small, you know, and you coming in and you just saying, "Yeah, this is a place that's been sitting here dusty, but right in the middle of King Street. I see it. Other people see it. I've got a board that is filled with people who I know in my circles, and they believe in me, and I'm going to come in here, and I believe in this place." and just that vision being able to then, and you're talking about your letter writing skills, I mean, but just in person, being able to bring people together to appreciate it. And the staff, so your first Christmas party, right? Janice has talked about this, which caused you the spider, because she said it was like, you know, she had eight arms and she just brought everybody all together and that was--

0:27:17 Anne Cleveland

It was more engendered by you get so excited that you want to share it. Why would you not want other people to find out about this gem? And I think what's been true from the very beginning is that everybody who's ever worked at the Library Society has had, is invested in it emotionally as well as intellectually and cares for it. And that automatically then leads to wanting to share with other people. It was Warren Ripley and his caring about the Library Society by wanting to protect it that led it into its sort of cave-like period. Because before that, it was the most visible, important, significantly influential entity in the state period. I mean it was as important as the state government because most people in the state government were members of the Library Society and it was only in the 50s or 60s when that group thought that the way to protect it, because they loved it, was to hide it, it just went into a decline. But when I look at the statistics of people who were still leaving property to the library society in the 70s and 80s, I mean that's amazing. So it was still vitally important, but fewer and fewer people knew about it.

0:29: 21 Jessica Mischner

Property records have to be so telling to just give them how Charleston just the value of property during those times I mean that has to be such an amazing history in and of itself so okay back to so we've taken out the stacks right you have this vision you bring in the piano talk a little bit about just the floor plan right and your vision coming in because bringing out bringing the main reading room into what it is now. You know we're currently sort of in a battle of the soul with the Charleston plays and B Mach about their referring to the third Red Club and their lobby as Charleston's living room but they're not. We are.

0:30:07 Anne Cleveland

Yeah I've told Casey Lavin that.

0:30:07 Jessica Mischner

Yeah me too. As I'm like shepherding him out of the back I love being there going thank you thank you thank you we can't wait to work with you more but you know Charleston's living room, but just speak a little bit about your vision at that point because you knew it could be bigger for members but it could also welcome people in.

0:30:30 Anne Cleveland

Well it was the main reading room was so easy. There was no question that it was beautiful space that could be made more beautiful and definitely more usable. It was things like the fact that where the bullpen, your office, the Igoe, all that was like a warehouse room. And that's where they housed the children's library. That was insane to me. And the microfilms, readers, and all of the storage microfilm and microfiche was all down in our break room. And the big table which is still in the bindery was as you come down those three steps there. And the break room with a bed and so much, sorry, but crap that had been accumulated for decades because they never threw anything away. There were broken chairs, broken lamps, a broken Victrola and some-- -

0:32:00 Jessica Mischner

Careful, man, we have a dumpster coming in and we're all very nervous about what's gonna get thrown away over the next week.

0:32:05 Anne Cleveland

Well, but this all--

0:32:07 Jessica Mischner

- It needed to go.

0:32:09 Anne Cleveland

This was needed to go. And so--

0:32:15 Jessica Mischner

- I like it.

0:32:19 Anne Cleveland

- But the problem was, and that's when all the pre-1970 book, No, what was where the book sale area was all--

0:32:27 Lisa Hayes

- East basement books?

0:32:29 Anne Cleveland

Were supposed to go to the vault, but they had been, they'd gotten a grant to, they were all wrapped in yellow.

0:32:41 Jessica Mischner

What was the grant?

0:32:43 Lisa Hayes

I don't remember who gave it to us.

0:32:44 Anne Cleveland

- I think it was, it wasn't the Donnelly, 'cause it was the application for a grant from the Donnelly Foundation that spiraled into the firing of the head librarian and the realization that the Library Society could be closing its doors because they were in such debt. I mean, they were just hemorrhaging.

0:33:11 Jessica Mischner

So as an aside, this is when you walk in the back door of the Library Society as it currently stands to the left and the right of the safe underneath the stairs. two sets of stacks, there were two openings and what was there then that we're talking about?

0:33:28 Lisa Hayes

That was what we call the East basement on that side.

0:33:32 Jessica Mischner

Oh, okay so what?

0:33:34 Anne Cleveland

That was all stuff that needed, had been catalogued and wrapped in protective paper and was eventually going to go to the lower vault.

0:33:49 Jessica Mischner

And we had that building then that now-- -

0:33: 53 Anne Cleveland

Oh yeah, yeah.

0:33:54 Jessica Mischner

So this was still the third building, this is before, behind Buxton, we have the East basement. Okay, all right.

0:34:00 Anne Cleveland

And outside, well, do we have a name for this?

0:34:05 Lisa Hayes

The Young Adult.

0:34:08 Anne Cleveland

YA area was stacks, steel stacks, that had pre-1970 fiction, was the original.

0:34:18 Lisa Hayes

The newspapers weren't the newspapers down here?

0:34:22 Anne Cleveland

No, the newspapers had been moved, but it was stuff that then got moved to where we moved the falls.

0:34:33 Jessica Mischner

What was in here? What was in the fella's room where we are now?

0:34:38 Anne Cleveland

Every pretty book that had been given but never accessioned. So it was just beautiful books but they didn't have numbers or anything. They'd never been non-circulating. Nobody would have known what was in here. In fact, when I turned this into the fellows room and the conference room table was in here, which meant you really didn't have room for anything else. It was a big cabinet down there. Anyway, this was several years later when I decided to try to make this into a fellows room where people who gave more than $500 a year, there were so few we were trying to get a few to do that, could come and relax. We'd have a coffee maker here and anyway, never quite got off the ground because it still had the cement floor but it did have the beautiful rug that's now in the I go. But I was determined to move the children's library. I want children to read. I want children's experience at a library to be one that they can hardly wait to go back. And that room, and you've seen pictures of this big cavernous, I mean it really looked like a warehouse.

0:36:16 Jessica Mischner

That was like 2010 when we were moving, yeah, it was so media. And in here, you made some big changes. Within a year.

0:36: 26 Anne Cleveland

So that first Christmas, I started in August, that Christmas is when I hired a couple of college boys to come and we cleared out everything in the, now the children's room and then cleaned it up and repainted the walls.

0:36:48 Jessica Mischner

Because that was Mr. Hinson's.

0:36:50 Anne Cleveland

That's where the Hinson Collection had been, but the Hinson Collection had been moved before I got here.

0:36:58 Jessica Mischner

Oh, okay. We still feel like he was down here until very recently. If you talk to Marian.

0:37:05 Anne Cleveland

Janice says that he hasn't been back since I came. I don't think he's been back since I came.

0:37:10 Jessica Mischner

I believe that. Marian feels him everywhere, but I definitely don't feel him down here. Occasionally I feel him in the pamphlet section of the Hinson.

0:37:19 Anne Cleveland

Well, the library had never been closed from before Christmas to after New Year's. They were closed to Christmas Day and New Year's Day. That was it. But I came in saying, "I'm still a school teacher at heart." That's right. Yeah. So we're going to close. I need to be cooking on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, which means Tuesday is our last day, that kind of thing. I mean, I think I warned everybody that to get anything out of the break room that they wanted, but we gutted it. But Carol was then faced with, "What are we going to do with all the children's books ?" Well that meant we had to move something over here in order to bring the children's books down to both. There weren't bookcases in the children's room at that point.

0:38:16 Jessica Mischner

What was everything sitting on?

0:38:18 Anne Cleveland

No, the books were in the floor to ceiling metal book shelves.

0:38:24 Jessica Mischner

But what was in there? What was in where the rabbit hole is now?

0:38:27 Anne Cleveland

There was the refrigerator, the microwave.

0:38:30 Jessica Mischner

Oh, that was the break room.

0:38:30 Anne Cleveland

That was the break room. And a bed where they took naps.

0:38:35 Jessica Mischner

But what was so bare was just...

0:38:37 Anne Cleveland

That had been the microfilm.

0:38:40 Jessica Mischner

Okay, okay, okay.

0:38:41 Anne Cleveland

Yeah.

0:38:42 Lisa Hayes

Who took naps?

0:38:44 Jessica Mischner

I would now. A 1000 percent.

0:38:47 Anne Cleveland

Their schedule was that they had two-hour naps.

0:38:53 Jessica Mischner

No.

0:38:53 Anne Cleveland

And they worked four-day weeks.

0:38:56 Jessica Mischner

Wait, Anne, that was like part of, before you got here, the library staff, the bed was for...

0:39:05 Anne Cleveland

No, no, before Eric.

0:39:06 Jessica Mischner

Before Eric, the bed was actually put to use? Janice did, I mean, I'm sure she didn't take naps.

0:39:12 Anne Cleveland

No, I doubt it, but...

0:39:13 Jessica Mischner

She monitored it?

0:39:14 Anne Cleveland

You asked her, no, no.

0:39:16 Jessica Mischner

Oh my God, it's crazy.

0:39:17 Anne Cleveland

Yeah, and no one worked more than four days a week. And they had full health insurance and retirement.

0:39:25 Jessica Mischner

The two hour naps, I mean, in a lot of ways that was sort of before its time.

0:39:30 Anne Cleveland

Well, no, I mean, when we...

0:39:31 Jessica Mischner

I mean Palo Alto, that would have been bigger.

0:39:34 Anne Cleveland

When we moved to Charleston in '83, the day school still ended at two in time to go home for dinner.

0:39:44 Jessica Mischner

For supper, yeah, for dinner. For dinner, yeah. The supper was at night.

0:39:47 Anne Cleveland

Just bizarre.

0:39:48 Jessica Mischner

Yeah. But there used to be a time when they would let out from something like 11: 30 to 1:30 before, I think this was in Charleston Day's second home, and everybody would go home. And then they'd come back and they have a snack of like gross crackers dipped in warm milk.

0:40:08 Anne Cleveland

Yeah.

0:40:12 Jessica Mischner

Um, but anyway, okay, so this was, we're talking, yes, we're old Charleston.

0:40:16 Anne Cleveland

But anyway, so it's at that point that I had people worrying about my sanity because that for Janice who might as well be a librarian but for Carol and for Debbie it meant now we have to move all the books in the book sale area to the right of the back door over to the vaults so that then we can move all the books in the Florida ceiling stacks in the YA area to that area so that we can then bring all the books that are in the children's room down here and just logistically that's a lot for that size staff and I said once we're at the point where you've moved the priests well the the vault books out and the pre-1970 fiction over, I'll take care of the rest. I said, "What do you mean ?" Well, no, it was before that because I said, I gave a party.

0:41:39 Jessica Mischner

We're still in the first year.

0:41:40 Anne Cleveland

Oh, yeah, yeah.

0:41:41 Lisa Hayes

We're still for Christmas.

0:41:42 Jessica Mischner

Yeah, I just like, this is crazy.

0:41:44 Anne Cleveland

No, this is after Christmas.

0:41:46 Jessica Mischner

But still, we're still in mid-2009 to mid-2010. It's just amazing, I guess, yeah.

0:41:53 Anne Cleveland

So I pulled together about 20 young people, Meg's age, and younger, and I said, "I'll provide beer and wine and pizza, and please come help." And so we broke into two teams, and I will say, and Trish Kometer had hired her by then. And Trish and Carol, of course, are thinking, people are gonna just put books on carts and move them. So they were in charge of, one was in charge of moving all the books from the YA floor, they were floor to ceiling stacks to the other area. because that had been empty. And then either Tricia or Carol, whoever was over in the children's set up carts and you were given a number. So one went first, two went first. And then as these stacks started emptying into the book sale area, and it meant you had to bring it over, come down the old elevator, get off, and then get the books off the car down the steps.

0:43:11 Jessica Mischner

It was old elevator, was there a different elevator in here or no?

0:43:14 Anne Cleveland

Oh, it was an old elevator.

0:43:16 Lisa Hayes

In the same spot.

0:43:17 Anne Cleveland

Same spot, yeah. But anyway, so we were here for, I don't think we stayed till midnight, but as soon as they started arriving from their work, it just was like a conveyor belt and we got it all done.

0:43:35 Jessica Mischner

At this point, had you created the idea of the rabbit hole? Have you created the name? Like talk about a bat a little bit. Because I've seen pictures of the kids of essentially where the Igoe Room is. And you know, and some of those kids are older too, right? So like it seems like you recognize not only that we needed the YA space, but somewhere for younger kids.

0:43:59 Anne Cleveland

You just needed the place that had--

0:44:02 Jessica Mischner

And my kids both with their nanny, I mean for lack of a better word, we moved here in 2010. Rabbit Hole firmly established, like they, I mean, they basically grew up down there. No one knew that I was their mother until I walked in here like five years later and someone was like, oh, are you here to pick up Camp? And I was like, I’m his mom, but because I'm still working at Garden and Gun. But so, like, that, I mean, you did that really quickly. Like when I was playing it all together for me.

0:44:36 Anne Cleveland

Well, like I said, I started August 1st and that first Christmas, six months later.

0:44:41 Jessica Mischner

Where did the name come from? And the mural?

0:44:43 Anne Cleveland

Well, I, by then had learned, I think our children had been given the country bunny and the little gold shoes when we moved to Charleston. I had no idea, I knew it was by DuBose Heyward, I think. But it was more just a story that was great for children. Had no idea that there was a connection with DuBose Hayward and the Library Society that he'd written it for his daughter here. And the illustrations are just so special that I asked Whitney Kreb, who was a friend of Meg's and Eugenia's, could I hire her to do murals? And she said, sure. And so that January and February, she freehand just painted the murals and it was done.

0:45:36 Jessica Mischner

It's just so crazy. I mean, truly, it never occurred to me. Camp was born in December of 2010 and started coming here, you know, right after, I guess, 2011, but it never occurred to me that it was that fresh.

0:45:52 Anne Cleveland

Oh, it was.

0:45:53 Jessica Mischner

Yeah, so great. So, okay, keep going, sorry. I'm inserting myself into the narrative, but it's a time stamp.

0:46:02 Anne Cleveland

Well, and so obviously I had done a lot of changing the use of space. And this was a very attractive enough room that I think it's where the board met once. well four times a year, but it was never used. And even now, everybody referred to it going down to the basement. And I would say, it's not the basement, it's the ground floor. But, you know, do you remember the old ramp in the parking lot? It was so awful looking and decrepit looking. I just was dying to do something with that and finally repainted it, but it still was a disaster. And that, that's another whole story. But I had changed so much that that's when I was down having dinner with Steve Gabel and his mother and Will. They played tennis and stuff. And she asked me, "Well, my God. can't have any more things you could possibly do at the library." And I said, "Well, I wouldn't say that." And she said, "What else is there that you could possibly think of to change ?" And I said, "Well, there's the book sale area, which is the entire first ground floor of a King Street facing building that's used six days a year for the fall book sale and the spring book sale and it's just nasty and you know the librarians love it because they cull some special books out out of donations and we make several thousand dollars a year from the book sales, which in the big scheme of things by then I knew was a drop in the bucket. I mean, all you needed was to get four fellows each giving $500 and you don't need the book sale for that kind of income. she said, "Well, what would you do with it ?" And I'm thinking, "Well, we get rent from Jacques Antiques, but I don't think we need another rental." And what I, Marge Palmer, was a dear friend of mine, and she was a book binder as her hobby. And I said, "Well," And she was trying to divide up the bookbinding equipment that Kathy Forrester's grandmother had given to the Gibbes back in the early '80s. I think it was in the '80s because she was a bookbinder. And she was wealthy enough. She bought her own press. She bought her own everything. And she'd given it to the Gibbs, which was the cultural institution at that point in the city. And they, she may have even given them the building, where Husk is.

0:49:39 Jessica Mischner

Yeah, she did. She did. So I have an interview with Brian from the 2015 of that oral history list too, by the way. We could add.

0:49:47 Anne Cleveland

But anyway, so she gave the equipment to the Gibbes to have a bindery. The Gibbes, as soon as she had died, had no interest in a bindery. So they then gave the equipment to this group of ladies through Marie Thrower, who was the librarian conservationist at the college, who was a dear friend of Marge's. And they got a space at the Confederate home because Marge was head of the board. And all the bookbinding equipment went to the Confederate home. But by 2010, Marge was still very involved with the Confederate home. And they were getting—that space was free, because all those ladies were either on the board or big helpers at the Confederate home. But they realized they needed more rental income. And so Marge was looking to get rid of the equipment. and Marie was talking to the Harlan and there was sort of negotiations between the library and the college. But it made such good sense. We have so many books in southern condition because they'd been in un-air conditioned humid rooms and buildings since 1748 that we could use help taking care of our books. So that was just a no-brainer. So I said to Steve's mother that I would turn it into a book bindery. And she said, "Well, how much would that cost ?" And I said, "I don't know." She said, "Well, you ought to find out." Well, I did, but that was the end of it, because I knew she was wealthy, and Steve had already pledged $10,000 from his little foundation. Kelly - So Steve Gabbo was there? Boggs - Yeah. And I don't want to ever have somebody think I'm looking at them for money, But a year later, she said, "You never told me what it would cost. Do you still want to do that renovation ?" I said, "Well, yeah." She said, "Well, did you find out ?" I said, "Well, yes." She said, "Well, how much was it ?" I said, "It was a lot." She said, "Well, how much ?" I said, "Over $50,000." She said, "Well, I'll do that." I went, "What ?" said her mother, I mean Deanna had been a socialite, came from lots of money and lived in Manhattan and had the farm up in New York and East Hampton all that kind of stuff. She was much happier milking cows and her mother had been a beautiful socialite. You've seen the picture of her, Dorothy the book binder. I mean she's beautiful, but her friends all were in the horsey set or bridge or whatever and she, her hobby was to bind books. I mean not many books but she found that fun and interesting. So she had some equipment. So that was close to DeAnn Turney's heart that the one thing that I thought I had left to do was to put in a book bindery but she never said that but she wrote out a check. Then I had to find, oh my god now, how do I, so I got Palmetto Craftsman who had given me the estimate to then come and we gutted it and it had asbestos, so we had to do all the, you know, all kinds of stuff. And then I thought, "Well, I don't know how, how would you do a layout asset to Carol and Trish ?" I said, "What, what it would be the best layout for a book bindery ?" "I don't know." So I reached out out to Etherington and said, "Do you have somebody who could come down to advise my librarians if we put in this bindery how best to utilize a bindery ?" You know, what -- they don't know about book binding, but -- so this young gal who was looking for sort of more money than Etheringdon was paying her said well I'll come down and I said you can stay at our house we'll feed you she said well I'll come down you know it and I said well how much will it be she said maybe $1,500 for the week and I said you got it I didn't have it but I figured I could get it and then I thought I said would you teach a bookbinding class my husband that for Christmas, you know, and she said sure. So, Steve Gates, Will Cleveland, I can't remember who else, we all convinced and we charged $250 or whatever. So, we have completely, didn't completely offset the cost of her coming and meeting with Debbie Finn, Trish Kometer and Carol, and she gave us the sort of, not blueprint, but how she thought best to utilize that space. So we went ahead and we gutted it and did it. She did the bookbinding class and Will had so much fun, he started going up to the college to learn more from Marie. And that's where he met Brian Beidler, who was about to graduate with a degree in chemistry. And he didn't have a job, but he was getting married. And Will came up with this hair-brain scheme that they would take-- we've got some unique volumes if we digitized them and then beautifully bound them and sold, you know, a hundred at $500 a piece, you know, you'd have an income stream. And I said, you are not, you're in la la land. We don't have a hundred members of the library society who will buy a $500 book. But I'll hire you as a book binder. And he didn't have any other job. And I figured out how to carve money aside and hired him for, I don't know, $30,000. And he was in heaven 'cause it was, yeah.

0:57:10 Jessica Mischner

I have two questions. One, how long has the relationship with Etherington gone long?

0:57:18 Anne Cleveland

It certainly predated me, yeah.

0:57:20 Jessica Mischner

But does anybody know?

0:57:22 Anne Cleveland

I don't think not, I think maybe back, I mean, Kathy would be the best to know that.

0:57:30 Jessica Mischner

That's just a really long standing relationship is cool. The other thing is, and then we're gonna stop 'cause I'm gonna have you for an hour and you're gonna have to do more of this. So we're gonna use you good and not-- - You can tell how hard it is for me to tell. Lisa kind of set my expectation for two. I think we're getting three, but I'm gonna say two, but the other thing is, is there a reason why in thinking about that downstairs space, you never went to retail?

0:57:59 Anne Cleveland

Oh.

0:58:02 Jessica Mischner

You just never went to retail.

0:58:03 Anne Cleveland

Well, one, I was thinking--

0:58:05 Jessica Mischner

For retail for this place.

0:58:07 Anne Cleveland

This, oh. Well, you got the children's library, the staff room. You, no, I wouldn't have wanted this to be retail. That's, I mean, you want this to be a sacred space for kids and for staff and for fellows. I do think that this is, still has tremendous potential to be used in a way other than just as it's used now.

0:58:50 Jessica Mischner

I used to always talk about how we wanted subscriptions to all the international magazines and you would have a more international free news stand out here.

0:58:59 Anne Cleveland

Well, my young friend Caroline Lord, Abert Lord, who is a member, but she just finished her master's at Clemson. She came and lived here for a year getting her master's in urban resilience.

0:59:22 Jessica Mischner

Oh my gosh. - But-- - What a cool thing that no school is ever gonna be able to have and colleges keep going anyway.

0:59:28 Anne Cleveland

But anyway, but Caroline came over yesterday just to say goodbye 'cause she's been here for a year. I wrote her letters of recommendation and all of that, but she's moving to Asheville to be near her sister. And she said that she had come in, sometime in the last week or so after she finished, gotten her masters, and she said, "Oh, I used to dream about going in and reading magazines." And so she said she came in and yes, her membership was still valid. And she said she spent several hours just sitting over, looking through magazines, 'cause she has not had time to even look at a magazine for the last year.

1:00:09 Jessica Mischner

You know, that's what you feel like when you're a mother. - Yeah. - You're like, "I can't wait to be bored over reading something." Okay, I'm gonna stop us here because we are in our... In Cleveland, we are signing off at 3:09 p.m. I'm gonna give you this. This is the questionnaire. Oh, the only thing that you really need to fill out. So you've signed this. Lisa, you... I don't want to mess up your fuzzy ASMR. and I...