The Second World War had recently ended when Gertrude Finney and her husband, Roy, came to White Center to live in a house her mother had found for them. The house was on the streetcar line to Seattle, so getting to and from work would be convenient.

But instead of taking a job in the city, Gertrude took part-time work at the White Center Library when it was located in the basement of the old fieldhouse on 104th Avenue Southwest.

According to the history provided by the White Center Chamber of Commerce, "members of the Mountain View School P.T.A. started the White Center Library in 1943. It began with a collection of donated books, which Nel Freeze loaned from her nearby home. The White Center Library Guild started at the same time and their first activity was to lobby for a community library."

Their efforts were rewarded in 1946 when the White Center branch of King County Library System opened in a space under the fieldhouse steps. The present White Center Library opened its doors in August 1976."

She worked with Mrs. Sullivan alongside Winona Anklen and eventually became head librarian when the work got to be too much for Mrs. Sullivan.

The space under the stairs at the fieldhouse was a cramped rectangle filled with shelves and books piled high. A central counter was where Gertrude held forth during her reign.

When we visited her recently at her residence at Mission Healthcare in Bellevue, she shared some of memories of those days.

"You entered on the north end of the building under a sign that said "Ladies' Restroom" under the front porch. We wanted an outside entrance and raised money with books sales, coffee sales, bake sales and we saved newspapers and stashed them under the stairway. Then, we carried the papers to our cars - they were filled up with almost a ton of paper - and we sold it as scrap."

Eventually, they saved enough money to get the outside entrance built.

Another time, she told us, some boys threw a basketball down the hallway into the library.

"I used to throw it back out," she said. "Then I stopped. They threw in four balls. And I did not throw them out. I told them they would lose their privilege of using the library if they kept throwing the balls and they stopped and never did it again."

In addition to her duties at the fieldhouse location, Gertrude managed the library inside Bill Byer's hardware store in Top Hat. She had a helper for a time, but when the helper could no longer abide the work (she could not get along with kids), Gertrude took over those duties too.

She recalls one special kid who came to see her when he was on leave from the military. He came to thank her for her work and her role in his life. She suspects he was one of the kids who were involved in a fistfight outside the library door where several boys were pummeling one boy. While an adult male stood by cheering them on, she waded into the melee and began pulling the boys apart. For her good deed, she was kicked and punched and ended up with black and blue legs, but not until after she grabbed some of the ruffians by the hair and separated them, stopping the fight.

"They kicked me, but I was in the fight with them," she said. She pulled one kid into the library and scolded him. She thinks it might have been the visiting soldier.

She was also very active in the White Center community, especially in work that involved raising money for the library. She recalls one time when she was on the stump for a funding proposal for a new library and encountered opposition from the local fire department. They were afraid that a successful library bond would take money from their funding and openly fought her proposal. She won anyway.

She also skirmished with some local teachers over her Summer Reading Program certification. If kids read a certain number of books in the summer, she would give them a certificate. When a teacher said, "They couldn't have done that," Gertrude produced a record of books checked out and testimony that the students actually knew the material they had read.

On the counter at the fieldhouse, she kept a small white rubber football with a slot cut in the top. That is where the 'fine' money went for books returned late. While many fines were never collected, she said, most books were returned anyway.

She had fond memories of all the rummage and bake sales they had and the help she got from members of the community. Many events were stage at the old Guaranty National Bank on 15th Avenue.

She and her husband raised one son, Glenn, who as a teenager was the circulation manager for the White Center News. He later became a structural engineer, retiring from the University of Washington.

After busy days at the library, she liked nothing better than to go home, make a cup of hot chocolate, and sit down and read a good book.

She worked for nearly 30 years for the King County Library System, just short of the required amount for special recognition. Now, through Mission Healthcare in Bellevue, and a program called New Chapters, Gertrude will receive special recognition for her service by the library system in a ceremony Nov. 12, 1 p.m. at Lakehills Library.

Those interested in attending should RSVP to Jonni Kingery, 425-519-1250.

Ken Robinson may be reached via wseditor@robinsonnews.com