When Geraldine Williamson was a young mother raising five kids in suburban Riverwoods, books were her passport to some necessary mental alone time.
“I’d just say to the kids, ‘You stay here. Mother is going on vacation,’ and I’d stretch out on the couch and read while I kept an eye on them,” Williamson said. “That’s what books are, a vacation.”
She and her late husband, Gordon, a schoolteacher, brought up their children to believe books were indispensable; that the library and the book rummage sale provided doors to recreation, education, and a richer life. Geraldine’s years as a volunteer at the Vernon Area Public Library District and as the book organizer for rummage sales at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Deerfield only reinforced that.
Her children decided to honor their mother’s 90th birthday this month by paying that tradition forward with a donation of more than 3,000 new and gently-used books to a Chicago Public School with no library books.
For two months, the siblings accumulated child-friendly titles of all kinds from friends, family, colleagues, and even Geraldine’s old library stomping grounds, in daughter Amy Williamson’s Chicago home.
“We started by putting the boxes where the Christmas tree had been, but they kind of spread,” she said.
On March 10, they gave 3,241 books – carefully organized by age-appropriate status – to volunteers with Books First, a private Chicago group that collects and donates books to book-poor Chicago schools.
She and the Books First volunteers drove them to Michael Faraday Elementary School on Chicago’s West Side, where principal Tawana Wilks-Williams and a team of staff and students unloaded them.
“What a blessing!” the school posted on its web page.
The family wanted to donate to a West Side school, because Gordon Williamson taught in the area.
At their mother’s birthday party two days later, her children – Amy, sisters Mary Ann and Megan, and brothers John and Ken – presented her with a single gift-wrapped used children’s book: “You’re Only Old Once!” by Dr. Seuss. Inside, its pages told Geraldine Williamson what had been done in her name.
“I was so happy and excited when I learned about it,” said the white-haired Geraldine Williamson, still sharp-witted but soft-spoken and gentle. She now lives at Mather Place of Wilmette, a senior living facility. “It was just the most wonderful thing to give me – I was smiling all weekend long.”
More Top Picks Fujifilm Instax Mini 90 Neo Classic
Amy Williamson, a public relations professional, is still a big reader, saying, “I like the feel of a book, the smell of a book, and I like being able to share a book.”
She hadn’t originally planned to share quite as many volumes as she and her family ended up collecting for the birthday project. Her original goal was 700, but it rose to 900 to highlight her mother’s 90th birthday. She and sister Megan Williamson, who helped spearhead the project, initially worried they wouldn’t be able to make it.
They needn’t have worried. Amy Williamson said spreading the word about the project, and putting up an Amazon.com book wish list for people to browse for inspiration, meant she had well over 2,000 books by delivery day.
“One thing I liked about having the wish list was that we were able to make sure we got lots of books featuring people of color, children of color, very diverse books,” she said. “When children see people in books that look like them, a book is going to be much more welcoming.”
She said the family received more donations of brand new books than they expected. One family friend who bought new books told her, “I wanted kids to have that experience of cracking a new book and being the first to open it.”
An hour before she and the Books First volunteers were set to head to Michael Faraday, Amy and Megan learned that another 750 books would shortly land at Amy’s doorstep, courtesy of their sister-in-law and a donation from the Friends of Batavia Public Library.
“We scrambled, but it was a good sort of scramble,” Amy said.
Chicago resident Bernadette Pawlik, who manages the Books First Facebook page, was just as pleased as the Williamson team.
“We don’t often get donations of this size,” she said. “Typically, we get 200-300 books per donor. We do have book drives give us books, but even those will be 2,500-2,000 books apiece. This was big.”
The group gives books to Chicago Public Schools with no libraries and student populations that are at least 25 percent homeless, and has donated to 10 schools so far, she said.
Amy Williamson said she hopes her mother’s birthday present will inspire others to undertake similar projects.
“I’d be so excited if someone read about what we did then thought, ‘Hey, I can do that for my mom,’ or ‘Hey, we’re having an anniversary soon, we could do this in honor of our anniversary.’ If they do that, they’ll be helping kids and schools that desperately need it.”
Back in Wilmette, Geraldine Williamson had one piece of gentle advice for Faraday students poring over their acquisitions: “I’d just say, ‘Read on! And if you don’t like the first one you read, try another.'”
To learn more about Books First visit or the group’s Facebook page.
Twitter: @pioneer_kathy