This year marked 60 years of employment at the Knox County Public Library for one Fountain City icon. And he just celebrated another birthday on July 2. There’s no better time to honor a man who’s been greeting library users for decades!
On the morning of March 5, 1962, Willard Laster, a returned veteran who’d done a stint in the Korean War, pulled up to Lawson McGhee Library on his motorcycle and applied for a job. He was hired as a custodian and quickly made a name for himself as somebody who could fix things. During Knoxville’s Civil Rights struggle, Willard recalls walking down to Gay Street to march on his lunch hour.
Willard Laster at the old Fountain City Branch Library on Hotel Avenue, now the Arts Center.
Starting in 1973, he drove the Library Bookmobile, taking the library to remote parts of the county where there were no branches. In 1980, he became a branch assistant at the Fountain City Branch. For many years, he was Santa Claus to hundreds of children who came into the library to sit on his knee. He has been advisor, consoler and friend to an equal number of adults, and, when necessary, he has exacted respect and good behavior from boundary-pushing teenagers. He is a legend, the likes of which we may not see again.
Join us in offering up some heartfelt congrats and a big Happy Birthday to Willard!
Mary Pom Claiborne is assistant director for marketing, communications and development for the Knox County Public Library.