Anna: Library Volunteer Goes Off to College

Though Fayetteville will always be her home, the time came last summer for Anna, a beloved, long-time Fayetteville Public Library volunteer, to strike out on her own.

A bright and inquisitive young woman, Anna enjoys traveling with her family and experiencing new cultures. Over the years, she and her family have journeyed across the country together. It was on a family vacation to Williamsburg, Virginia, that Anna discovered the College of William and Mary, which for the next four years she is calling home.

Despite her excitement about college, before her departure, Anna wondered what it would be like to live with roommates and without the comforts of home. She would miss her friends and family rolling their eyes at her grammar fanaticism, and she would miss taking photographs of the year-round happenings of her favorite Fayetteville haunts like the Square and Dickson Street. But the one thing she says she cannot live without is readily available in college. That one thing is books.

Like her father, Anna is a history buff, but she also enjoys reading the classics, including A Tale of Two Cities and Nicholas Nickelby. Her all-time favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird because “it’s important for kids to know [the] history [of race relations in our country], to not forget how things used to be and to improve on the past in the future.”

With a promising future as a Spanish and Linguistics major, Anna looks forward to world travel and the opportunity to teach English as a Second Language abroad. Her knowledge of history has given her perspective beyond her 18 years and the desire to make a positive difference in people’s lives. This drive motivated Anna to volunteer regularly at the library while in high school. Anna says that when she was younger, in addition to providing a great place to relax, the library offered a wide variety of reading materials that helped shape her decisions about the kind of adult she would become. “It was important for me to feel like I was helping with something, to give back,” she says. We miss her gentle smile and generous spirit, but we are glad to have been a part of her journey.