There’s nothing quite like a book for delivering knowledge, exercising the imagination and in general adding joy to life.
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That’s one reason members of the Wilmette Rotary Club have worked for more than a decade gathering and donating books to Chicago schools whose students could benefit from the gift.
This year, said Maurice Sullivan, long-time literacy chair and head of the club’s “Big Book Drive,” she and the volunteer team she calls her “cast of thousands” had a little extra to celebrate when their Oct. 1 to Nov. 16 campaign ended its run in the basement of Gillson Park’s Lakeview Center.
The final tally of fiction and nonfiction books donated to the campaign by area schools North Shore libraries showed club members and their supporters collected almost 18,000 books – roughly 3,000 to 4,000 more than the club collected the previous year, Sullivan said Dec. 18.
“It was an unexpectedly good year,” Sullivan said. “I wasn’t getting excited about the year’s drive, partly because I didn’t think we were going to do as well as we did last year since one library that donates to the drive wasn’t going to be able to this year. Then about mid-campaign, we realized how well we were doing.”
A hefty donation from Wilmette Junior High School pumped up the numbers, she said.
More flowed from Regina Dominican and New Trier Township High Schools, other Wilmette Public School District 39 schools, Marie Murphy School in Avoca School District 37 and public libraries in Wilmette, Skokie, Lake Bluff and Northfield/Winnetka, she added. Individuals were also welcome to donate books, Sullivan said.
In the end, 17,650 books, all categorized by reading age, were packed into boxes donated by the Office Depot store at 2722 Green Bay Road in Evanston, and readied for Dec. 11 delivery to Catalyst Schools, the two-campus Chicago charter school network that the club has worked with for 12 years, Sullivan said.
It was a satisfying end to an effort that begins, as it does every year, when Sullivan contacts potential book donors throughout the summer months before the Oct. 1 kick-off.
Sullivan said the book drive would be impossible without the help of volunteers from within the 90-year-old club’s 70-strong membership, and from other supporters including non-Rotarians like Sullivan family friend Jack Flynn, who help club members visit donor sites to pick up books, help sort the books and deliver the collection to its intended audience.
Officials at Catalyst praised both the club and Sullivan.
“The work that goes into this is phenomenal. So many people have to work so hard to accumulate that number of books, and the logistics to pick them up and organize them is immense,” Edmund Siderewicz said. “Maurice has taken this on as her mission.”
Siderewicz, Catalyst Schools’ co-founder and its vice president for mission and external relations, said volunteers delivered this year’s collection in two 17-foot trailers.
“Our two schools serve over 1,600 students from kindergarten through 12th grade in high-need communities,” he said. “For kids to get these kinds of books, to be able to take them home and read them for enjoyment and enrichment, is incredible.”
Gordon Hannon, Catalyst Schools CEO, agreed, and said that even students’ parents benefit.
“When parents come in for parent-teacher conferences, we have all the books lined up in the hallways, and they can take books home for their families,” Hannon said.
Siderewicz said any books unused by the organization’s two schools – the Catalyst Circle Rock School in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood and the Catalyst Maria School in the city’s Chicago Lawn neighborhood – get sent to other schools, including San Miguel School, a private school that partners with Catalyst.
“It’s just a marvelous, marvelous gift to get and to give,” Siderewicz said.
Twitter: @pioneer_kathy
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