Ex-Actress Plays a Big Role With Shut-In Readers

Statuesque Samantha Dusinberre looks every bit an actress, one gifted with timing, stage presence and a voice that could do anything but sing.

Those days of Dusinberre’s acting, mostly in liturgical drama in churches in Oregon and Washington, have passed, but the memory lingers. “Acting is still in the back of my head,” she said.

Today, Dusinberre, 50, has found another role to help fill the acting void. As head of Huntington Beach’s Books for You program, she delivers books to shut-ins.

“I never knew who I was,” Dusinberre said. “I read books and played the roles instead of finding myself. My only real-life role was being a wife and mother.”

And no one in Orange County, except a sorority sister, has seen her perform on what she calls “the cathedral stage”--churches, which were the settings for many of her performances.

“I gained a good reputation in liturgical drama and other acting,” said Dusinberre, who added, “Those wonderful old churches made magnificent theaters. Sadly, there’s nothing like that in Orange County.”

Now with Books for You, Dusinberre delivers as many as 20 books to each of her patrons every three weeks.

“Some of my clients haven’t been outside of their homes in two years,” she said. “Their only contact with the outside world is through me. It’s a hell of a responsibility.”

Dusinberre works as a volunteer. “If I got paid for it, it wouldn’t be fun,” she said. “But I could use some help.”

Dusinberre, who was shy as a child, said books were a kind of lifeline for her, too. She said they helped her live a number of lives, acting out the people from the books she read.

“I couldn’t dance and was lousy on the violin so I had to do something with my unharnessed energy,” she said. “I read and read, and eventually the theater took over. Now I’m back to books, and it’s like I’ve reached full cycle.”

Perhaps there’s yet more acting for Dusinberre that would include books. “I was thinking that someday I might read to people who can’t see and my 30 years of drama might give me a chance to perform again,” she said.

Her future goals include expanding book deliveries and increasing the number of patrons, as well as taking the program into mobile home parks and retirement villages.

But Dusinberre said there’s one more part she would like to play. “I haven’t had a grandmother role yet,” she said with a sigh.

Julie Herridge, the children’s librarian at the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library, said its annual poetry contest for elementary school students is not only fun but shows children’s progression in thinking.

For instance, Mission School second-grader Jenny Peterson, who won first place for her age group, wrote this poem on the contest theme “Change your Mind”:

In the library you can find

books that help change your mind.

Science and mammals, flowers and a story book.

You can learn a lot if you look.

But sixth-grader Shannon Baker at Marco Foster Elementary School showed the difference in maturity with the first-place winning poem for her age group with the same theme:

I wanted to get up this morn, but morn came too soon.

The night before it seemed a good idea to get up early in the morn

to see the dew glisten on the grass and make the day too long.

But now the covers are so warm and my pillow has become so soft

that it lets me drift from dream to dream.

In between my dreams I feel it must be too cold so early in the morn.

I’m sure my friends are asleep as well, too soon to play.

I’ll just roll over for a while.

I think my friends think like me that early morning should come at noon.

The winners will get a bound book of the poems.

Sunny Hills Car Wash in Fullerton had a pretty good 1987, said manager Oscar Hernandez of Orange, so he decided to give free car washes one day from 2 to 5 p.m. last week to celebrate his good fortune.

It didn’t take long for the word to get around, because the car wash sent 300 cars through during those three hours.

“On a really good day,” said Hernandez, “we would send 200 cars through in that amount of time.”

Acknowledgments--A surprise party attended by many of the students who rode her Newport-Mesa Unified School District bus served as a send-off to Marie Smith, 62, of Costa Mesa, who retired after 25 years of transporting the youths to and from school.