Library to get $1-million gift

A pioneering computer programmer whose career was shaped by a book he checked out as a teenager from the tiny West Hollywood library will donate $1 million to help finance a new public library there.

The contribution by software designer Stuart Feigin, one of the first employees of Oracle Corp., has been announced by organizers of the West Hollywood Library Fund. That group is helping pay for the $33.5-million library and community center.

Feigin, 61, of Reno, grew up in West Hollywood. “I’d walk to the library every week. It was a small place and there weren’t that many books,” he said. But one of them was “How to Program an IBM 1401” and Feigin read it cover to cover. “It kind of got me started.”

Library fund leader LouAnne Greenwald said the group has raised $3.3 million of its $10-million goal. Plans call for construction to begin in April at a site in West Hollywood Park, opposite the Pacific Design Center.

-- Bob Pool