Couple Enter Orange Coast Library’s Book of Love

Please step back with me 50 years, to 1948 when Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa was so new its library didn’t even have books:

Its charter librarian, Beth Cosner, came up with a way to fill the shelves--she asked faculty members to lend it hardbacks from their personal collections until the books she wanted could be purchased.

Then, along came Giles T. Brown, a charter faculty member, who taught history. He donated numerous books. Later on, once the library was off and running, he tried to get one of them back. Sorry, but that one’s stamped as personal property of the library, Cosner explained. But it’s mine, Brown replied.

Tempers flared. This meeting of two bright people just didn’t go well at all. The mix-up was straightened out, but Brown knew to avoid the head librarian his next trip over there.

Brown and Cosner--Beth Cosner Brown--laughed about that inauspicious introduction a great deal during their 41 years of marriage.

There are a couple of reasons I want to share with you something about this marvelous woman, who died in 1992. One is that Orange Coast will soon dedicate the Beth Cosner Brown Reference Room at its library in her memory. But another reason is what’s been going on with Giles Brown, now 82 and living in Newport Beach, since her death.

“When someone you love dies,” he told me, “you don’t really know what to do to honor her memory. But I knew that for years she always struggled with the library’s finances. Budgets sometimes have to be in place two years in advance, and knowledge can’t always wait two years.”

What he did was establish a $20,000 endowment so that the campus library can purchase new books, tapes, and magazines. Brown, who gives talks across the country on world affairs, decided he would add to the endowment any money he received for his speeches. Then friends heard about it and wanted to contribute.

“I set a goal of $100,000, not knowing if I’d ever reach it,” he said.

In the five years since he began, the endowment is up to $96,000. Brown said he might just have to set a new goal for another $100,000. It’s important to note that Brown asked for nothing in return. He told me he was never comfortable with people who donated to a college only in exchange for some honor for themselves.

So the naming of the reference room after his late wife was a surprise to Brown, but one that deeply touched him.

You won’t see this on the dedication plaque, but Brown and Cosner are noted in a history book about the campus as the college’s “first faculty romance.”

Brown laughs about that now.

“I was asked to head up our first graduation program, and Beth was on the committee that chose me,” he said. “I guess she’d gotten to like me a little better after our meeting over the library book.

Cosner’s first library facility on campus was a converted Santa Ana Army Air Base barracks building. She worked closely with the architect when a new library was built a few years later. That one was replaced by the larger Norman E. Watson Library in 1968. The building she helped establish has been the Admissions and Counseling Building for 30 years.

Cosner had been a librarian in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II, and after the war served as a civilian librarian with the Army, overseeing American libraries established in Japan.

She remained with Orange Coast just four years; she became head librarian for the Huntington Beach Union High School District, a post she held for 25 years.

Brown, now retired, left Orange Coast College in 1960 to teach at Cal State Fullerton, where he later wound up as an associate vice president.

But Brown remained tied to Orange Coast. He had led its series of world affairs lectures called “Behind the Headlines.” When he left for Cal State Fullerton, Orange Coast asked him to continue the lecture series, which he did for another 30 years. He and Cosner traveled the world gathering material for that series. They once even trekked together by horseback through India’s rugged Himalayas to interview the exiled Dalai Lama.

By the way, Brown and Cosner were not only the first faculty romance, they were Orange Coast’s first wedding couple. They were married on Nov. 21, 1951, in a chapel on campus.

Now This Is a Tiger Tale: Some readers know I won’t pass up an opportunity to correct national TV types who insist on turning Orange County into a suburb of Los Angeles. Did you catch Jim Nantz on CBS’ golf telecast Sunday talking about Tiger Woods being “a native of Los Angeles”?

Woods isn’t even a native of Los Angeles County. Why couldn’t Nantz just say “a native of neighboring Orange County”? That would get across the point that Woods was playing before a home crowd.

For the record, Florida resident Tiger Woods is a native of Cypress, which is seven cities and four Thomas Brothers pages removed from Los Angeles.

Thanks for 250 Unpaid Years: Several readers called or wrote with their own praise for volunteers after a recent column about a Cowan Heights couple, Jean and Al Reynolds. The Reynoldses recently had volunteered to spend both Christmas and their wedding anniversary doing American Red Cross work in Guam following a typhoon.

There are so many terrific Red Cross volunteers that any number of them could be singled out for their efforts. Five of them were given special honors by the Orange County Chapter of the Red Cross in ceremonies Sunday: Ed Sockerson of Irvine, a volunteer for 65 years; Yvonne Allderdice of Anaheim, 55 years; Virgina Heath of La Habra, 55 years; Mickey Mendenhall of Santa Ana, 40 years; and Dorothy Huber of Mission Viejo, 35 years.

Wrap-Up: The dedication of the Beth Cosner Brown Reference Room at the Watson Library will be March 30 at 11 a.m. It is one of numerous events scheduled on campus in connection with its 50th anniversary celebration.

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com