Archdale library to celebrate milestone

ARCHDALE — One of the city of Archdale’s storied institutions is preparing to celebrate a milestone anniversary next month.

The Archdale Public Library is honoring its 50th year serving the city’s residents and will be commemorating several key events in its history over the next several weeks. The original library opened its doors on June 4, 1973. It was a monthslong process, as the newly incorporated municipality had to prioritize the construction of various buildings and organizations.

A core group of Archdale and Trinity residents presented the idea of a local public library to the Archdale City Council in the early 1970s. The council decided that the city, which was incorporated in 1969, could not afford to fund the requested project.

The group in favor of the library held fundraisers and asked for outside donations of equipment, money, furniture and books. In November 1972, the council passed a library ordinance for the city, requiring a board of trustees. The original board included Zeola English, Hazel Hancock, Ruth Miller, Martha Stunda, Marian Tillman and Roy Allen.

Lloyd Taylor provided a home for the library, half of a business-zoned duplex on Main Street, across from where McDonald’s now stands.

The first book was donated by the Beta Sigma chapter of the Alpha Delta Kappa teachers’ sorority. Local historian and genealogist Frances Elkins is credited with early contributions. The library opened with about 4,000 books.

City offices and the library were moved to a facility on Balfour Drive in August 1974. Later, the library vacated its wing at that early facility and moved into the Dewey English House on Main Street.

As the 1980s were coming to a close, Bill and Elizabeth Aldridge saw that the library was outgrowing the Dewey English home on Main Street. They donated their home and property in 1989 as the site for a new and modern library for the city of Archdale. Construction on Archdale’s new library was completed on the current site at 10433 S. Main St. in February 1992.

Matt Shaw was hired as the manager of the Archdale branch of the Randolph County Library in January 2011 and continues in that role presently.

According to Shaw, one surviving member of the original Archdale Library Board of Trustees remains. Martha Stunda of Trinity is the last of that founding group.

Stunda and Shaw were both among the many city residents who paid tribute to the late Marian M. Tillman, Archdale’s first librarian, who died Aug. 7, 2019.

“She and I begged for so many books to begin the library,” Stunda told the Archdale-Trinity News in 2019. “We had to sort through the materials and, with her expertise in cataloging materials, place the items in their proper homes in the library collection.”

The current manager of the library credits Tillman with being a pioneer of education in the Archdale community.

“Ms. Tillman was instrumental in founding the Archdale Library,” Shaw said at the time of her passing. “She was a champion of generations of readers, young and old, in Northwest Randolph County and leaves an exceptional legacy of literacy through her career working in libraries, both at Archdale Public Library as well as in the libraries of Randolph County Schools.”

Tillman, as part of the inaugural Archdale Library Board of Trustees, helped oversee the construction of the first library and established its first collection. Tillman was selected to serve as the first librarian of the facility when it opened in 1973.

As the city remembers Tillman, the members of that first board of trustees and everyone who helped make the programs possible that children enjoy today at the library, the A-T News will continue its coverage in June of this celebration.