by Leslie Lytle, Messenger Staff Writer

In 2016 when Theresa Shackelford asked Trudy Cunningham to take over as chair of Thurmond Memorial Library board, it didn’t take Cunningham two seconds to decide: “Absolutely not.” Cunningham had just retired. Thurmond had a board, and Cunningham’s main goal in retirement was “never to attend another meeting.” Shackelford persisted, “Trudy, if you take over you can do whatever you damn well please.” Cunningham relented. Doing as she pleased has served Thurmond Memorial Library well, returning the venerable institution to what it began as in the 1890s. Said Cunningham, “What we continue to celebrate is the delight that book people share.”

The Thurmond Library story begins post-Civil-War, when Bishops Quintard and Green, influential founding figures of the University, visited the Dabney family on their Mississippi plantation. Cunningham speculated the bishops were “likely looking for lodging while they recruited money and souls.” During the war, with their brothers and father gone, the Dabney sisters worked alongside the slaves on the 4,000-acre plantation, and in the slaves’ place after they were freed. The sisters managed to maintain the plantation until its sale in 1883. The bishops urged the sisters to visit Sewanee. In 1892, Sophy, Susan and Lelia Dabney moved there intending to rent and run a boarding house. Learning the University planned to build dormitories, the sisters abandoned the boarding house idea. With the help of her sisters, Susan Dabney Smedes built Gladstone Cottage on Oklahoma Avenue in 1894 and the following year built a schoolhouse on the same leasehold. That schoolhouse was the first physical home of the Sewanee Circulating Library.

Sophy Dabney Thurmond reportedly donated more than 2,000 books to the library. But Cunningham suspects women were already passing books around. She learned about the book collection of a Sewanee woman containing notations about who a book belonged to and who had already read it. “Women back then didn’t work and had help in the home and were bright because they were married to professors,” Cunningham observed. “My sense is they were hungry for academic enrichment, and they shared what they could get hold of.”

In 1902, a dedicated room in the new parish hall became the Sewanee Circulating Library’s home. For a few years, there was a paid librarian, the library’s first and only, who earned $10 a month for keeping the library open three days a week. In 1910 Rev. Claiborne, who served as the executor of Sophy Dabney Thurmond’s estate, renamed the Sewanee Circulating Library and Reading Room the Thurmond Memorial Library, as a tribute to Sophy both for her donation of books to the library and for her active role in the church.

After WWI Thurmond Library became a classroom on Sundays. The doors were never locked. But after thefts were reported, Rev. Claiborne gave the books to the DuBose Memorial Training School in Monteagle. The books were not suited to the school’s needs, though, and were apparently unwanted. Miss Lizzie Wadhams reorganized the library board and demanded the books be returned, enlisting the help of Sonia Thurmond, Sophy’s daughter. Two horsedrawn wagonloads of books made the journey back to Sewanee, just 2 months before the DuBose School burned on Jan. 9, 1924.

In 1936 Thurmond Library reported having an impressive 2,000 volumes in its collection, with 300 in circulation.

Then during WW II, the library disappeared from view again, with the books in storage in the parish hall basement and the local women on the library board busy with knitting socks, gloves, and sweaters for the troops and doing other Red Cross work. For several years, the room dedicated to the library housed a Boy Scout museum. The museum moved to Tracy City in 1949, and the stored books were once again unboxed.

In 1953 the Tennessee Regional Library’s bookmobile began using Thurmond as a regular station, and Thurmond came to be regarded as Franklin County’s second public library. The Sewanee Woman’s Club assumed responsibility for Thurmond in 1961, with volunteers assuring the library was open five days a week.

But the books went back into boxes again from 2011 to 2015 when the parish hall closed for renovation.

In 2016, enter Trudy Cunningham. Volunteers expected 33 boxes of books to unpack, when there were 50. Commenting on the generosity of the book loving Sewanee community, Cunningham said, “People take out two books and bring back seven.” Although that was the case in the past, there are no sign out cards. The library’s lending policy is “if you want it, keep it. If you know someone who wants it, give it to them,” Cunningham stressed. “What would be the point in knowing George has it?” she joked. Books are easy to find in the small 20’ X 20’ room, and visitors who can’t find a book or want a book the library doesn’t have are urged to fill out a “request card,” available on the shelf just outside the library door. One of Cunningham’s favorite requests was a printed, unsigned note from what was likely a preschooler: “Need more dinos.”

Cunningham found an eBay deal offering 35 dinosaur books for $25. She estimates the library currently has over 4,000 volumes with the annual book sale scheduled for Labor Day weekend expected to be the largest ever. Books rarely borrowed are offered for sale. Paperback books cost $1 and hardback books cost $2, with a volume discount, three paperbacks for $2 and three hardbacks for $5. The books that don’t sell at the book sale are sold to McKay’s in Chattanooga.

Thurmond used to receive $500 annually from the Sewanee Community Chest, but the book sale is so successful, the donation is no longer needed. Cunningham describes the book sale as a “weaving straw into gold” proposition. “The book sale generally makes about $2,000,” Cunningham said, “and we have no expenses.” The library uses proceeds from the book sale to ship books requested by clients directly to their home, if they wish, to purchase requested books, and to purchase two copies of each book being read by the Sewanee Woman’s Club book club. With a goal of not having over $5,000 cash on hand, the library has made donations to the church and subsidized worthy projects. Several years ago, the cash surplus purchased 100 copies of artist Joan Balfour Payne’s illustrated book “The Raven and Other Fairytales.” Reading fairytale picture books to Sewanee children post integration, Payne realized the black children had never seen kings and princesses who were black. Payne changed that, in her version of the fairytales, she repainted the characters as people of color.

When the renovated parish hall reopened in 2016, a question arose about when the library would be open. The vestry considered giving keys to 26 people who used the building, with the library having a key. “That was too complicated for a small town,” Cunningham insists. She had a better idea.

A feature of the library is a broken light that cannot be turned off. Thurmond Library does not publicly post the hours when the library is open. The light that cannot be turned off quietly accomplishes that function. “I need to check and make sure the bulb isn’t burned out,” Cunningham said. After all, where the light is always on is what books are all about.

Note: Trudy Cunningham spent the early days of COVID-19 researching Thurmond Library. In addition to an interview with Cunningham, the information appearing here came from a report she delivered to the Rectors Forum in 2021 and from a story appearing in the Winchester Herald Times, April 15, 1964.