By Rachael McDonald, KLCC
Blue River is still rebuilding from the Holiday Farm Fire of 2020. On April 5, the community held a block party to celebrate the progress.
The Fire Station and health clinic have been rebuilt. The General Store is under construction with an opening date of Sept. 7, to coincide with the five year anniversary of the fire.
A new, larger, O’Brien Memorial Library has its grand opening on Nov. 16, 2024. The previous one was completely destroyed by the fire.
“I think it’s just such a huge addition to our community,” said Connie Richardson, president of the Friends of the Library. “And we’re going above and beyond just borrowing books.”
The library is named for Frances O’Brien, who started checking out books on her front porch in 1928.
“She started so long ago on her porch in the orange crate with books,” said Richardson. “I’m so honored to still be a part of the fact that we’re carrying on her legacy and just keeping the library alive for the community.”
On the day of the Block Party, a local returned a book that was checked out before the Holiday Farm Fire: a Janet Evanovich novel.
“She handed me this book and said, ‘My mom had checked this book out from the O’Brien Memorial Library before the fire and I’m finally giving it back to you’. I said, ‘Do you want to keep it?’ And she said, ‘Oh no. It belongs in the library.’”
Richardson said the spine has a handwritten sticker on the spine. That’s how it was done back before the fire. They had a card catalog.
“I’m trying to decide what to do with it,” she said.
An events space
The new O’Brien Memorial Library is an improvement on the one that burned down. This one is larger and has bathrooms, which the old one didn’t have. There’s also a gathering space.
Friends of the Library member John Witte has organized a monthly speaker series at the library.
“We have a series of events all organized around the theme of the river and the meaning of the river in our lives,” he said.
Their speaker on April 12 is Kathleen Dean Moore, ecologist, philosopher, and essayist. Her talk is entitled, “The Healing Power of a River.”
The speaker series continues through the summer.
This article appeared in KLCC and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
This work is being supported by RARE AmeriCorps member Braden Ravenscraft.