Santos raised money for library expansion

Large community room available for use

BELLA VISTA — A project that started in 2010 is just now nearing completion. The addition at the Bella Vista Library is now built but not completely paid for and not yet completely furnished.

There’s still work to do for volunteers such as Susan Santos.

Santos was the chairwoman of the library’s board, but when the library became part of the city, the board became part of the library foundation. The foundation actually owns the building, while the city operates the library. That means all the money to enlarge the building had to be raised by volunteers.

In 2011, the board hired an architect, Santos remembered. Next, a construction company was selected to work with the architect through the design phase.

Then a fundraising company was signed on and fundraising started in earnest in 2013.

But not everything went as planned, she said. The fundraising company wasn’t a good fit and the board severed the contract. Also, a charitable foundation that helped build the original library building chose not to help with the expansion.

Eventually, the architect was asked to downsize the plans and a loan was secured.

The new addition was ready when the library opened after the initial covid-19 shutdown. Unfortunately, there was no furniture.

Santos volunteered at the library for the weeks it was open and offered impromptu tours of the mostly empty addition.

“It was fun,” she said. Almost everyone commented on the view of the trees out the back windows and many people were thrilled to know about the large community room. The room can be used even if the library itself is closed.

Then word came from the city that the library, along with all city offices would be closing again because of covid-19.

There’s still fundraising to be done for the foundation, Santos said. First, the loan that helped pay for the addition must be paid off and then it will probably start work on expanding the parking lot.

It’s not the only volunteer position Santos fills. She spent a term serving on the Gravette School Board and still works on some of its committees. She chose to focus on the library when she realized school boards are bound by a lot of state red tape. They don’t have the impact she was hoping for.

She retired from an administrative position in a suburban school district near Chicago. She was the curriculum data manager, which meant she used data to help make decisions about the curriculum.

She remembers a study that showed why boys do better than girls in math. Boys, she said, didn’t give girls the chance to participate fully during class time. Teachers had not really noticed and, when it was pointed out and they changed their teaching style, the girls did better.

The other part of her job was bringing more technology into classrooms and that meant that some teachers needed to be convinced to use it.

Back then, she said, there was a battle over buying Macs (made by Apple) or PCs (personal computers made by companies other than Apple). In her district, PCs won out because of the cost.

“It was a dollars and cents question,” she explained.

When she and her husband got ready to retire, they knew they wanted to live someplace with shorter, less extreme winters, but they also wanted all four seasons. They planned a road trip to Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas to find their next home.

After looking at a home in Fayetteville — they knew they wanted to live close enough to a university to enjoy the cultural benefits — they stopped for lunch and found a magazine on their table called Arkansas Retired. There was an ad for Bella Vista, so they headed north and found their new hometown.

They bought land on the west side, designed the home they wanted and built it. That was in 2001.

Santos has two children and two grandchildren and a few grand-cats. She loves to read and cook. Recently, she mastered a “decent sourdough.”

Although she was born in El Dorado while her father was in the military, she grew up in Russell, Kan. Russell, she said, was a very small town that happened to have an oil boom in the ’30s. At one time, it had the highest per capita income in the country.

Santos