@story  MARLA CANRELL
@images  MARCUS COKER

I’m a writer because of Anita Paddock. I took her writing class when she was teaching at Westark Community College. The first thing I wrote was a travesty. I’ve forgotten the worst of it, but I do remember there was an elderly woman in it who stood through the entire piece, in high heels, at the foot of her sister’s grave and gave a soliloquy on life, love and the deficiencies of men.

When I finished reading it aloud, Anita tapped her chin with her index finger and said, “Well, isn’t that lovely.” She stalled. “It’s not truly a story.” She paused again. “It could do with a bit of dialogue.” She smiled at me. “I’d say you’ve written a nice little vignette.”

I was too green to know what a vignette was, and I was too naïve to realize that “isn’t that lovely” was most likely a question and not a testament to any talent I might possess.

But she guided me through the remainder of the classes, and I ended up with a story that I wouldn’t be ashamed to show you today.

My story is not unlike hundreds of others in this area. Over the years Anita has taught new writers to be good writers, and some good writers to be great ones. She’s also that person who causes a traffic jam if you happen to stand beside her at a party. “I’d like you to meet someone,” she’ll say, and before she can put your hand in theirs, seven more people line up to talk to her.

It’s easy to believe that Anita, who’s just retired as branch manager for the Miller Library in Fort Smith, is one of those charmed people, eternally sunny, skipping through the rough patches of life with little effort.

It just isn’t so.

To do the story justice you have to go back to October of 1995. Anita was living in a stately old house, teaching writing, and working part time in a Vivian’s Bookstore in Fort Smith. Her husband Ben was a talented attorney.   

If you ever wanted to step into someone’s life, Anita’s looked like a good bet. But Ben was struggling that year. He’d lost his biggest corporate client when the company was sold. The loss caused money problems, something Ben, who was part of one of the city’s prominent families, hadn’t faced before.

When Anita talks about what happened next, she tells the story with the precision of a writer. The two had a ritual. When Ben came home from work, he whistled to announce his arrival. When Anita came downstairs in the morning, he whistled again. She’d usually find him in the kitchen, sitting at the table with the newspaper.

But on that Sunday morning, after waking from a fitful sleep, Anita descended the stairs. She didn’t hear Ben whistle. 

The newspaper had been brought inside. In the kitchen she found a letter from Ben. He’d gone to a warehouse they owned. He’d taken his gun. 

There were ten pages of instructions. She was to call a close friend, who was also an attorney. He named a funeral director who needed to be notified. He made sure she stayed away from the warehouse, writing and then underlining this sentence. You stay away from there.
In the midst of the darkest morning of her life, Ben had mapped out a plan that would lead her through the first part of her life without him. 
“I never dreamed anything like this would happen,” Anita said. “I always thought things would turn around.”

There is a busy-ness that accompanies death: planning the funeral, writing fistfuls of thank you cards. But that can only last so long. One day you wake up with a finished to-do list and you’re left to wear the weight of sorrow like a shroud.

“I had a friend named Becky who came to my house. Her husband had committed suicide. And I asked her how long it had been. She told me fourteen years. I told her I couldn’t live fourteen years like this. And she said, ‘Yes you can.’”

What saved Anita was a tiny ad in the local paper, way back in the Help Wanted section, that appeared two months after Ben’s death. The Fort Smith Public Library had an opening for someone to manage a little store-front branch. The pay was $14,500 a year. Anita decided to apply. “I think about it now,” Anita said, “and I think how in the world did I do that? But I did. I remember being proud of how I’d handled myself in the interview, and that was a little something I could hold on to.”

Before the end of the day the phone rang. Anita had gotten the job. “That first day of work I called my friend Becky and I said, once again, ‘I don’t think I can do this.’ And she said, ‘Yes you can.’”

Anita remembers following her co-workers around with a notepad and asking “about a million questions.” For at least eight hours a day she had the relief of focusing on something other than sadness. At the same time, voters were weighing the question of whether Fort Smith needed to fund major improvements to the library system. 

The library’s director believed Anita was just the person to sway the public. “When they asked me to do PR, I knew I could. The first thing I did was make sure my little library was not a place where you had to be quiet. I brought in some houseplants I’d gotten when Ben died, and some of my own furniture. I patterned it after the bookstore where I’d worked. I loved it there, the customers loved it. People came in to chit-chat, to visit, and to talk about books. So that was my entire plan.”

Well, not her entire plan. The other part was a covert mission, prompted by something she learned years before. “My daddy owned his own store. He taught me to have a firm handshake. He encouraged me to learn the customers’ names and the names of their children. He was always giving away pocketknives to little boys and my mom would say, ‘Jim, why are you doing that?’ And Daddy would say, ‘If I give him a pocketknife now, he’ll buy a refrigerator from me when he’s a big boy.’ And I saw it happen all the time.

“So at the library, I’d tell a patron, ‘Well, you owe a quarter fine on this, but that’s okay.’ It’s just a quarter, but it’s goodwill. And when the vote was counted in 1997, the library won.”

Anita has been the manager of the Miller Library since the day it opened. “It became my baby. I brought in local artists and had them show their work. I read review after review, so I’d know the best books to order. These guys would come and get these little Westerns, and I’d say, ‘Let’s try something else.’  I started putting my selections on a cart near the front of the library, so it was easy to see some really good books. I think it worked.”

“It’s been a job I just loved. When someone here does something good, I’ll look over and say, ‘Wow, what a librarian.’ I’ve been accused of Tom Sawyer-ing folks. Maybe I do, but it sure is nice to get a little praise.

“The truly wonderful thing about the library is that it’s the most democratic place on earth. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, you have the same standing here. If you have a library card you can find out anything.”

Anita believes in books the way other people believe in religion. The books, and the library that houses them, rescued her when her world was crumbling.

January first is her first official day of retirement. She plans to stay in her pajamas and read. After that, who knows? Those of us who took our first steps as writers under her watchful eye are hoping she’ll teach now and then. Some of us, I happen to know, have a few vignettes that could use a little work.

There will be a farewell reception for Anita on January 22 from 2 – 4 p.m. at the Miller Branch Library in Fort Smith.