Romance in the pages and online
Library system celebrates its centennial this month
Frances Smith has only lived five of her 77 years without knowing William Smith Jr. — the first five.
The pair met as kindergarteners, and for the next seven decades, they were inseparable — eventually marrying in 1965 and raising two children. Their relationship was jolted three years ago, when William Smith Jr. suffered two strokes, rendering him bedridden and voiceless and requiring that he move to an assisted living facility in St. Mary’s County.
She began visiting Smith five days a week, sitting, reading or singing for hours with many nights spent at a nearby Navy Lodge. Then came the coronavirus pandemic, stopping her visits for seven months.
As each month passed, she worried he would forget her without hearing her voice. Or worse, he could feel like he’d been “dropped off and suspended in another neverland.”
“It was like I lost him because I had no way of talking or communicating or even knowing if he knew I was there to support him,” said Frances Smith, who lives in Annapolis. “It was like I lost a huge part of me.”
By early October, Smith had enough. She marched into the Eastport-Annapolis Neck Library with her grandson’s library card and a mission: Find some way virtually to visit her “Smitty,” his nickname. At the library, Smith met helpful staff who helped her create a Zoom account, taught her how to use it and scheduled her weekly appointments on Fridays at 11:30 a.m., when William’s nursing staff could help him connect with his wife.
The library rose to the occasion, creating a “lifeline,” Smith said.
Anne Arundel County Public Library is celebrating a century of serving Anne Arundel County residents like Smith. The official 100-year date was Friday. Since 1921, it’s been a steadfast resource for residents, serving as a quiet study, a place to connect with neighbors, a kaleidoscope into other worlds when the real one is too stressful. When the pandemic took hold, the staff quickly made over their regular job descriptions.
Though mostly in empty buildings, they’re busy bundling books with similar genres or authors to make curbside pickup easy, coordinating live storytimes for the kindergarten readiness program, calculating how long the books need to sit untouched after being returned to let any potential trace of the virus die off and helping community members use Chromebooks in the parking lot for short-term internet access while the branch buildings have been closed to the public.
In pre-pandemic days, the library invested in 3D printers, lent pre-loaded electronic readers like Kindles and added self-checkout machines at some branches.
In 2018, the library system survived a big hack, exposing at least 600 computers to a sophisticated virus. The system also dealt with controversy over Drag Queen Story Time. In 2019, the board added its first openly transgender member, and CEO Skip Auld was selected to be the Grand Marshal at the second annual Annapolis Pride celebration in June, a token of appreciation for Auld’s fight for LGBTQ+ inclusion in library
programming.
“Little Black girls in a white setting are caged birds. I learned the emotional and mental and social parts of being Black through his eyes. Frances Smith, library user and Annapolis resident
“The library obviously used to just be a repository of books… (but) it is not quite the ‘shushing’ place it once was,” library spokesperson Christine Feldmann said.
Frances and William Smith Jr. began their relationship on the 800 block of Washington Street in Baltimore, rarely out of earshot of one another. They attended different schools but became playmates and study buddies, spending afternoons with textbooks and notepads splayed out before them on her white marble stoop.
In the 1950s and ‘60s, schools in Baltimore were still overwhelmingly segregated. Both Smiths are Black, but Frances attended majority-white schools. She felt isolated.
“Little Black girls in a white setting are caged birds,” Smith said. “I learned the emotional and mental and social parts of being Black through his eyes.”
Through William, Frances Smith connected with the neighborhood and made friends. Among them, Robert Bell, former chief judge of the Maryland Court of Appeals. They met when the two boys attended Dunbar Junior and Senior High School, and “palled around together a good bit,” Bell said. They played basketball after school, sang on street corners and spent some Thanksgiving dinners together.
They both attended Morgan State University and married after college. Smith said her husband was the talker. She left him notes around the house, scribbling out her favorite poems or thoughts for him. When he served in the Vietnam War, they communicated through letters — one of which contained the announcement of her pregnancy with their second child.
Decade after decade, they found ways to stay close, even when they were physically far apart. But the pandemic presented a challenge Smith couldn’t crack on her own. It was one of her three grandchildren, Cameron Pike, 15, who lent his grandmother a library card when she realized hers was expired.
Smith brought Cameron to the library when he was growing up, willing him to develop a hunger for knowledge.
100 years of education
Anne Arundel County Public Library’s first librarian, Eliza Suydam, opened the first location on Jan. 8, 1921, 27 years before Frances met William Smith Jr.
Established in the municipal building in downtown Annapolis, the library charged 10 cents for an identification card and loaned books out for two weeks. It was open three days a week for two hours a day. The original library moved several times before finding its permanent home on West Street in 1965 — the year the Smiths were married — and over the years, several branches were added.
This century, the library signed a long term lease for the Discoveries branch in the Westfield Annapolis Mall and opened the Michael E. Busch Library on West Street, in the same location the Annapolis library has been for more than 50 years.
When the doors are open to the public, social workers are embedded at two county branches, a resource that will hopefully be expanded to the other 14, Feldmann said.
There’s often a medical truck parked outside the Brooklyn Park branch, and Feldmann said they’ve offered HIV testing and cancer screenings before the pandemic. Now, they’ve begun using some branches as COVID-19 testing locations.
“Yes, books will always be important, but so will education in general… We see ourselves as part of the education establishment. We educate people from cradle to grave.”
To celebrate its anniversary amid the pandemic, Feldmann said staff decked the sidewalks of downtown Annapolis with birthday banners, will hold several virtual events and will share videos of residents sharing their library experiences. They’re considering a library time capsule, a centennial library card design and a contest where people can design “the library of the future,” though these things are undecided.
So while some library staff dream up ways to celebrate, others bustle around the Eastport-Annapolis Neighborhood Library branch as Smith makes the 10-minute pandemic pilgrimage to make sure her husband knows she lives him.
When she gets inside and sheds her down coat, she sits down at a computer labeled “Public PC 13.”
She pulls a small, wire-bound notebook out of her bag and flips it open. A photo of her husband taken five years ago on vacation in O’ahu is taped on the inside cover. He’s wearing a blue Hawaiian print shirt. His hair and beard are white, and a big smile stretches across his face.
Wearing black latex gloves to protect herself from the virus, she carefully types her library card number in to unlock the computer, flips a page in her notebook and enters the Zoom codes necessary with the help of library staff.
Bell, her friend of more than 60 years, is by her side. She chit-chats with him through masks as the two wait for William Smith Jr. to appear on the other side of the screen. They both light up when he does.
Though it’s been years since he suffered the two strokes, it’s still disorienting for Smith and Bell to see him this way.
“You like to remember people the way they were at their best, but it’s important that you do not abandon him,” Bell said. “Every time you go, it’s difficult because you don’t see any improvement. But you go, because he’s your friend, and you want to see that he is OK.”
Smith updates him on the political news and Bell tells him about the ribs he prepared for Christmas dinner. They talk about the COVID-19 vaccine and fantasize about a day in the near future when they can safely visit him in person again. Even the comments they make about his appearance are hopeful, every sentence ending in a positive, uplifting lilt.
Over and over again, Frances coaxes William Smith Jr. to open his eyes, to see their faces even though masked. His eyelids flutter open a few times. She soothes him, pleads with him a little.
“Let us know you hear us, and you feel us,” she said.
Then 30 minutes are up. Frances Smith will return to Zoom next week, at the same time, with the skills the library gave her.
It’s not the stoop, but for now, it’s enough.