Friends of Library ‘Keep Light Burning’ in Jefferson Park

Ralph Gilmer and his friends could write the book on persistence. But they probably couldn’t find shelf space for it at their favorite library.

Not yet, that is.

Gilmer, a Ladera Heights real estate agent, and a handful of other volunteers have spent every Tuesday night for the past 6 1/2 years at the tiny Jefferson Park branch library in southwestern Los Angeles, studying ways to enlarge its minuscule reading room and researching ways to pay for it.

Today their diligence will pay off as the group marks the 75th anniversary of the little library by unveiling a $2.7-million expansion project that will more than double its size.

“Nobody thought we could do it, but we did,” Gilmer said. “It’s something this community deserves.”

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The Jefferson Park library was established in 1915 in the corner of a drugstore. It moved into its current Spanish tile-roofed stucco building at 2211 W. Jefferson Blvd. in 1923.

In the early days, it was a centerpiece for the neighborhood. During the 1940s, it was a meeting place for book lovers from Our Authors Study Club, a reading group that studied works by black authors. In 1950, club founder Vassie D. Wright introduced Black History Week to Southern California.

The library was designated the Jefferson-Vassie Wright Memorial Library in 1985 when it was repaired after being set on fire by street gang members angry at being blocked from selling drugs at a small park next to the library.

Gilmer’s group grew out of the 1992 riots, when vandals torched numerous buildings around Jefferson Park.

The library was spared. But community leaders were shaken by the destruction.

When Gilmer saw a friend, Robert Sausedo, walk door-to-door handing out fliers reading “Don’t Burn This Neighborhood!” he was moved to take action too.

“We knocked on doors to ask what could be done to minimize this from happening again,” Gilmer said. “People said there was nothing we could do.”

But Gilmer and Sausedo, a loan consultant and health care analyst, disagreed. They arranged a meeting at the library--the community’s only public building--and invited neighbors to attend.

It didn’t take long to find an issue to tackle: Those at the meeting discovered that the little library had no public restroom. So for their first project the group set out to get restrooms and a wheelchair ramp built.

“When we got them installed, the community knew we were serious,” Gilmer said.

Now organized as a nonprofit Community Empowerment Corp., the group grew. Its members were forced to shove library reading tables together each Tuesday night to make room for everyone. They decided to try to get a community meeting room added to the library.

Architect Tom Rael, who had lived nearby while attending USC, joined the group and contributed library expansion ideas. Others looked for sources of money to pay for construction.

“I was naive enough to think if we put enough effort into it, the money would come,” Gilmer recalls.

The group appealed to Mayor Richard Riordan and got his endorsement--but no cash. Library officials were encouraging, but they were unable to add the Jefferson branch to a list of projects to be funded under a 1996 bond measure.

Gilmer remembers dejectedly leaving one meeting convinced that the campaign was doomed. Stopping at a service station on his way home, an elderly man pumping gas struck up a conversation. “We’re trying to build a library but can’t,” Gilmer told him.

“The old man told me, ‘Keep the light burning. Someone’s coming home,’ ” Gilmer said.

Following that advice, the group plodded on. Finally, some unspent federal block grant money was found by the city’s Community Development Department to fund the library expansion.

“We’d already drawn up plans, and they could see we meant business,” he said. “So we grabbed [the grant money] before anybody else could.”

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The city will tear down a pair of adjacent buildings that once housed an ironworks company and an electric shop to make room for the expansion. A Santa Monica design firm has drawn up blueprints for a modernistic addition that will blend in with the existing library.

Architect Wade Killefer said the addition will include a homework room, children’s story room, expanded reading rooms for children and adults, 20 computer stations and a gated parking lot along with the community meeting room.

Sausedo, a vice president of the Jefferson Park Community Empowerment Corp., said construction is scheduled to begin next April. The project is expected to be completed in early 2001.

Carolyn Jenkins, a surgical technician who is also a vice president of the group, said the library will be closed during the construction. But a bookmobile or a temporary library site will be offered in the neighborhood, she said.

Rael said the group won’t be finished--even after Saturday’s ceremonies are over.

Tours of the library by historian Greg Fischer of Angel City Tours, games, music and poetry readings are planned from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The motto for the day is the stranger’s admonition to “Keep the light burning.”

“This is just the beginning,” Rael said. “A community recreation center for Jefferson Park is next.”