St. Mary's Library Books Trip Down Memory Lane for Its 50th -

It will be flashback evening Saturday as the three branches of the St. Mary's County Memorial Library celebrate their 50th anniversary from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Leonardtown Library.

Library staff will step back to October 1950 for the occasion, with some dressed in the fashions of that time and others wearing attire from the 1960s and 1970s.

Library officials said members of the public attending the event are invited to dress in the styles of the library's first three decades. Prizes will be awarded for the best outfits.

Author and poet Lucille Clifton will tell her tale as part of the "Sharing Our Stories . . . Building Our Communities" project she did with Carver and Hollywood elementary schools. Clifton and students at the two schools gathered family and community stories that celebrate their diverse heritages.

Clifton is distinguished professor of humanities at St. Mary's College of Maryland. The project was supported by the Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Fund.

Those attending Saturday's celebration will be able to experience library activities as they were in the past, as well as see and use the library's newest computer technology. Old photographs of the library and its services will be on display.

A video produced by Spring Ridge Middle School containing clips of county residents sharing their memories of the library will play throughout the evening. Mary Wood, the library's director, will cut a birthday cake.

St. Mary's County public libraries began in 1950 when Mary Patterson Davidson gave Tudor Hall, a historic mansion in Leonardtown, to the St. Mary's County government, provided that it would be used as a public library. She sought to honor the St. Mary's County casualties of World Wars I and II.

Initially, the county commissioners were not willing to raise taxes to pay for a public library. So Davidson also supplied the basic operating funds of $35,000 and launched a campaign to raise the remaining necessary money, according to historical research by the library staff.

In 1950 the St. Mary's County Memorial Library opened its doors to the public at Tudor Hall with 1,500 to 2,000 volumes. In its first year, the library was visited 7,000 times. That number nearly doubled the following year.

The library system continued to grow with the addition of a bookmobile, which accounted for one-half of the total circulation, and a branch library in Lexington Park. Lexington Park Library originally was housed in Frank Knox School, then moved to Felix Johnson Educational Center. In 1968 the Lexington Park Library moved to its current location.

Nearly 30 years after Tudor Hall opened, a library was established for the people of the northern portion of the county. At first Charlotte Hall Library was located in a bookmobile. Opened officially in 1982, it grew quickly, moved first to a storefront in 1984 and then to its current location on Route 6 in 1989.

Meanwhile, the library in Leonardtown outgrew Tudor Hall. In 1984 it moved to the old armory building, where the National Guard and the Motor Vehicle Administration were once located. Now the Lexington Park Library has outgrown its current facilities and is preparing to move to a larger building.

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