Restoring Queens Library’s Reputation To Match Its Work
The Queens Borough Public Library has been in the news a lot recently, and not for positive reasons.
Scandal has enveloped its president and CEO, Thomas W. Galante. I will not recount the details of Galante’s enormous salaries, outlandish perks, lack of accountability, exorbitant office renovations, or lucrative side jobs. Nor will I rehash the details of the Queens Library’s refusal to make its accounts transparent or how its board of trustees attempted to shield Galante from any responsibility.
This should tell you what you need to know: legislation to reform the Queens Library’s governance was passed by the Assembly unanimously, and was approved by the State Senate 59-1, before Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed it into law. The scandals around the Queens Library were so galling that Albany united to respond swiftly. State Sen. Michael Gianaris, who represents a portion of Woodhaven, should be commended for sponsoring the bill in his chamber. In contrast, State Sen. Greg Ball, who cast the sole dissenting vote, should be ashamed of himself.
Galante and his supporters on the board of trustees have damaged the Queens Library’s reputation. But with reform in the offing, I want to take this opportunity to share a personal story of mine that I hope will cast light on why the Queens Library, a very important institution, should not be tainted permanently by Galante and his allies. What the library has meant to me
Early in life, I realized that I wasn’t going to end up a professional baseball player.
I worked hard at the sport. I was lucky to have excellent coaches as a member of the Rich-Haven Hill Little League and the Ridgewood- Glendale-Middle Village-Maspeth Little League. I went to more practices than I can count at The Pit (now Strack Pond), Victory Field, Seither Stadium, and Juniper Park. I loved baseball deeply.
But no matter how hard I worked at it, there were countless kids better than I was. I understood that I simply was not going to become the next Bernie Williams or Howard Johnson.
Fortunately, I also realized early that I excelled in the classroom in a way I never did on the sports field. My path in life was going to involve a whole lot of reading and writing. The Woodhaven branch of the Queens Library was utterly crucial to that realization.
Growing up in Woodhaven, the first two libraries I ever knew were the school library at St. Thomas the Apostle, where I was a student for nine years, and the Woodhaven branch of the Queens Public Library.
I regularly checked out piles of books from the St. Thomas library. Its collection introduced me to many subjects, from Aesop’s Fables to the immune system. Often, though, when I wanted to know more about something, I needed to look beyond my school library’s walls.
That’s how the Woodhaven branch became part of my life. If I asked to go to the Queens Library on Forest Parkway, Mom or Dad would take me there whenever they could. With its larger stock of books, it often scratched whatever scholastic itch I happened to have. I usually found more than I could actually read on a particular subject. It helped me appreciate just how much there was to learn, which only increased my enthusiasm for learning.
At first, Mom would check books out for me with her library card. But at some point-probably when I was 10 or 11-I was old enough to have a library card of my own. Finally receiving that piece of plastic, with its sky blue bar across the top and my signature on its reverse, was a rite of passage in my intellectual development. It signified that I was finally old enough to be trusted with those receptacles of knowledge. The world of learning was open to me on the same terms as any adult.
It also helped me understand that learning is a lifelong endeavor. I remember vividly one day sitting at a table in the library. An older man was seated across from me, writing in a notebook, engrossed. He must be working on something very important, I thought to myself. Unable to curb my curiosity, I craned my neck and glanced at the notebook. He was copying multiplication tables, over and over. Decades older than my parents, he was working diligently to master something I had been fortunate to learn in fourth grade. I won’t forget my admiration at his effort. This library, I realized, was truly a place for people of all ages to better themselves.
The library card that the Woodhaven branch issued to me opened up the doors of other libraries, too. When I was in the seventh grade and had to research a subject that not even the Woodhaven branch had much information about, I was directed to the Queens Library’s central branch on Merrick Boulevard in Jamaica. There, I found everything I wanted and more. The central library became part of my world by way of the Woodhaven branch.
As I grew older, my literary tendencies only deepened, as did my fondness for the Woodhaven branch. I’ve had the chance to conduct research in some of the world’s finest libraries, but it’s all been part of an intellectual maturation process that the Woodhaven library facilitated.
Future generations of Woodhaven residents deserve the same opportunities I enjoyed. The vast majority of people who will not end up as professional athletes starring in Madison Square Garden need public libraries, where crucial intellectual passions and valuable life skills will be fostered. Few other places or institutions in a community do this as effectively as its library.
When the Woodhaven library was faced with crippling budget cuts in recent years, scores of residents came out to show their support and share their fond memories of the library. The Woodhaven Residents’ Block Association, The Friends of the Woodhaven Library, and others who protested these cuts recognized that they were fighting for an institution that opens up minds and opportunities.
In this context, the threatened cuts had powerful practical and symbolic consequences. Similarly, the latest scandals do too.
We in Woodhaven know that a community that allows its library to fade away without a fight is one that is willing to forfeit its intellectual future. And it appears, thank goodness, that our elected officials in Albany and in New York City seem to have a similar notion. The branches of the Queens Library cannot be permitted to wither, either through ill-advised budget cuts or through the excesses and incompetence of undeserving leaders.
I might not have become the Yankees’ center fielder, but my life has been no poorer for it thanks to the solid foundation the Woodhaven library helped lay for me. Let’s see the Queens Library’s governance and leadership reformed quickly, so that it can emerge from these scandals and use its resources wisely to lay similar foundations for countless other Queens residents.
Editor’s note: The next Woodhaven Residents’ Block Association meeting is on Saturday, July 19, 10 a.m. at Emanuel United Church of Christ (93-12 91st Avenue). Blenkinsopp is a member of Community Board 9 and director of communications for the WRBA. For additional information on the WRBA, visit www.woodhaven-nyc.org.
