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News + Events
Smiley family icon Gerow Smiley passes at age 98
Sculptor Linda Pew’s bust of Gerow Smiley, posed in the Young Readers Room which Gerow’s grandfather Daniel Smiley made possible in 1920. The pansy was the favorite flower of the Smiley brothers.
Gerow Smiley, grandnephew of Smiley Library founders Albert and Alfred Smiley, and grandson of their half-brother Daniel Smiley, benefactor of the Smiley Library’s Young Readers Room, passed away on Sunday morning in Redlands. He was 98.
To say that Gerow lived a full life would be an understatement. Born in 1922, Gerow grew up at his family’s Mohonk Lake Mountain House resort in the Shawangunk Mountains near New Paltz,
New York where grandfather Daniel was in charge. Gerow attended Haverford College for two years in the late 1930s but felt the urge to explore new horizons out west. He worked on ranches in Wyoming and Arizona where he became an accomplished horseman.
Despite having an agricultural worker deferment, Gerow volunteered to enlist in the United States Navy in World War II and served as a pharmacist’s mate. Before enlisting, Gerow married former Mohonk colleague Marion Bonnell in 1943 and began a family that would eventually comprise three sons, Paul, Kip and David.
Following the war, Gerow returned to ranching but found time to also compete as a rodeo bronco rider and won several competitions before a broken leg convinced him to pursue other paths.
After finishing his undergraduate work, Gerow earned a doctorate in veterinary medicine from Colorado State University in 1951. He returned to Mohonk Lake where he cared for the family’s horses and cattle in addition to serving as the resort’s director of personnel.
In 1955 Gerow moved away from Mohonk, first to Florida, then Wyoming and later to Petaluma California, practicing large animal veterinary medicine for 25 years. Back trouble from a lifetime of
manipulating equine and bovine patients eventually took a toll. In the 1980s he returned to Mohonk Lake supervising maintenance at the expansive property. Among other accomplishments he invented a composting system using manure and garbage that was ahead of its time.
Beginning in 1991, Gerow followed in the footsteps of his grandfather Daniel by spending his winters in Redlands. He made many friends in his winter home, attending numerous events at the
Smiley library and the Congregational Church. In 2012, he moved to Redlands full-time. He volunteered at the Redlands Community Hospital and with the library’s adult literacy program, helping new English learners improve their conversational English. Asked to choose a favorite book and how it influenced his life for the latter program, he named Steven Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage, an account of the Lewis and Clark expedition. “It is an amazing account of vision, courage, inventive skill and ability to overcome all obstacles. An inspiration for the youth of today.” Former library management analyst Janice Jones and I enjoyed taking him out for lunch occasionally and we were always impressed by his inquisitive mind, wide range of knowledge and hearty appetite. This past summer, he was very concerned by the city’s cuts to the library‘s budget and relieved when the community stepped up to minimize the impact.
Always a voracious reader, Gerow became a frequent borrower of the library’s audiobooks when his eyes began to fail him. I’m grateful I had the opportunity to drop off several at his home earlier this month and see him (appropriately socially distanced) for what turned out to be the last time.
The Smiley community is a lesser place without him.
Don McCue
In 2010 Gerow wrote a memoir which was invaluable in composing this brief account of a unique man. He concluded it with a favorite poem.
Death is Nothing at All
I have only slipped away into the next room;
I am I and you are you;
Whatever we were to each other
That we are still.
Call me by the old familiar name,
Speak of me in the easy way
which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow
Laugh as we always laughed
At the jokes that we enjoyed together.
Play, smile; think of me; pray for me;
Let my name be ever the household word
That it always was;
Let it be spoken without an effort;
Without the ghost of a shadow up on it.
Life means all that it ever meant;
It is the same as it ever was;
There is absolute and unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind, being out of sight?
I am but waiting for you – for an interval,
Somewhere very near –
Just around the corner.
All is well.
By H. G. Holland
The Woman’s Vote: A Century of Suffrage
Celebrate the centennial of the 19th Amendment by exploring a new virtual exhibit about the fight to enfranchise women in the United States. “The Woman’s Vote: A Century of Suffrage” discusses the efforts of women in city of Redlands, state of California, and across the country to win the right to vote. The long struggle culminated in the passage of the 19th Amendment a century ago.
See the exhibit here or visit the Special Collections page.
Resilient Redlands Webinar Series
A.K. Smiley Public Library’s “Resilient Redlands” webinar series focused on topics related to Redlands history and the collections of the Lincoln Memorial Shrine. Webinars were led by Smiley Library staff with a few special guests.
Past Webinars
2020
April 25 – “Intro to Redlands History”
May 2 – “From the Shrine’s Collections: Emancipation and Lincoln’s Letter to James Conkling”
May 9 – “The Great Crusade: Reflections on the 75th Anniversary of the End of World War II in Europe”
May 16 – “All Aboard for Redlands: How the Railroad Shaped Our Town”
May 23 – “From the Shrine’s Collections: The U.S. Sanitary Commission”
May 30 – “Redlands History in Motion: The Home Movie Preservation Project”
June 6 – “Reflections on D-Day and the Normandy Campaign”
June 13 – “From the Shrine’s Collections: Colonel Chapin and the 21st Connecticut Infantry”
June 27– “California Sunshine: Citrus Label Art of the Redlands District”
July 11 – “Grant’s First Great Victory: The Campaign for Forts Henry & Donelson”
July 25 – “Let’s Take a Walk Around the Block: A Brief Survey of Architecture in Redlands”
August 8 – “Hiroshima-Nagasaki: Reflections on the 75th Anniversary”
September 12 –“Booze, Brews, and Views: Redlands’s Uneasy Relationship with Spiritous Beverage”
September 26 – “Warriors & Patriots: Women of the Civil War”
October 10 – “Pure Gold Archives”
October 24 – “The Smiley Library Children’s Room Centennial: The Couple Behind the Gift”
November 14 – “Redlands and the Influenza Pandemic, 1918-1919”
December 12 –“The Smileys and Christmases Past”
2021
January 9 –“The Civil War in Southern California”
January 23 – “Redlands: The Town That Philanthropy Built”
February 6 – “African American literature” by Professor Charles Williams of Chaffey College
February 13 – “Lincoln’s Greatest Decision: Emancipation and the Use of Black Troops” with Smiley Library Director Don McCue
February 20 – “Black Voice News and the History of the Black Press” by Dr. Paulette Brown-Hinds
February 27 – “Hidden in Plain Sight: African Americans in the Library’s Historic Collections” with Archivist Dr. Nathan Gonzales
March 13 – “Women of Redlands in World War I”
March 27 – “The Indomitable Florence Billings of Redlands”
April 10 – “Water in Thirsty Land”
April 24 – “Redlands: A Heritage of Greenery”
May 9 – “The of Life Elmer Ellsworth of the 1st Fire Zouaves”
May 22 – “Midcentury Redlands”
Watch previous webinars on Smiley Library’s Facebook page and the Special Collections YouTube channel.
These programs were made possible by a generous grant from The Kara Foundation.
Community Steps Up for Smiley Library
Demonstrating how important A.K. Smiley Public Library is to Redlands, dozens of members of the community pledged their own financial resources to save the Library from the most severe budget cuts in its 126-year history, raising $193,000 in two weeks.
“What an amazing testament to the people of our community who, rather than see drastic cuts in our Library’s hours and services, dug into their own pockets to keep it open” remarked Library Trustee Rosa Gomez. The gifts from the community, in concert with the entirety of the Library’s $126,000 reserve fund, make up the 2020 COVID-19 Emergency Fund needed to avoid many of the projected layoffs, if only for one year. “Fortunately the Library Board was able to cobble together additional reserve funds to contribute, but the challenge when you use one-time funds for recurring needs is that once they’re spent, they’re spent. We won’t be able to do this again next year,” Gomez continued.
“The Library hadn’t completely recovered from the cuts of the Great Recession, so the sudden 20% reduction from the City meant the loss of 16 positions and the elimination of 21 hours of service to the public,” commented Library Director Don McCue. “While this doesn’t fix everything for the upcoming year, it is a great help, allowing the Library to be open 48 hours a week instead of only thirty-five.”
“We’re confident that, as the City budget picture hopefully improves, the City Council will reaffirm its commitment to the Library by resuming the funding needed to preserve these important programs,” said Bill Hatfield, President of the Library’s Board of Trustees. “The Library is part of the soul of this community. When Albert Smiley gave the Library and park to the City of Redlands in 1898, it was with the expectation that it would be ‘faithfully and liberally sustained’ by the City. We, with the City Council, must continue to honor his vision and gift.”