Two institutions in Gillett are getting ready to celebrate their centennials, and their key representatives are figuring out how best to show off for the community.
The Gillett Public Library and the Gillett Woman’s Club will both turn 100 in 2027. The club was instrumental for getting Gillett’s first library into existence when space was set aside on the second floor of the then-village hall. As such, they have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship since then where they’ve helped each other to grow and thrive, according to Shannon Stoner, library director.
“Our first librarian was Mabel Korotev,” Stoner said. “She was married to Stanley Korotev, the postman here. She served on and off. She had a couple of stints. She was here for a few years and then she went away, and then she was here for another couple of years.”
The library was born through the efforts of 17 women meeting Feb. 25, 1927, in an upstairs room of a civic building on Main Street. Besides forming the library, the woman’s club was also working to clean up Zippel Park, which was used at that time to store old machinery and unused culverts.
After decades of being in the village hall building, the library moved to its current place on Main Street in the 1990s. When the bank next door closed its doors in 2013, the library expanded to include a community center where programs take place.
Stoner noted that the library has come into its own over the last 100 years without being completely tied to government funding. There have been plenty of book sales, can drives, spaghetti dinners, concerts and other fundraisers held to keep the buildings in good working order and thriving with programs.
“One of the most important things you can have in the community is a library, a public library,” Stoner said. “We are the place where people go for resources, for books, for information, for forms, for printing out forms, filing for assistance. We are here to serve our community, and our community worked very, very hard to purchase this library.”
Stoner recounted that the Gillett library got one of its first sets of books from the Farnsworth Public Library in Oconto, decades before inter-library loans became commonplace in libraries.
“That was exciting for the library at the time,” Stoner said. “Trying to get books wasn’t as easy as going on Amazon or going online. You had to get the horse and buggy at that time.”
The city of Gillett has more than 1,300 residents, but there are around 1,000 library cards in the local library’s system, so Stoner knows that the community is here for the library as much, if not more, than the library is here for the community.
“Without the people of Gillett, we would not exist,” Stoner said. “This community is very supportive of their library. We have one of the highest cardholders-to-residents ratio in the county.”
The woman’s club itself has gone through many changes over the years, according to Donna Kohls, treasurer and chairwoman of the centennial committee.
“When it started, there were well over 50 women who were involved with it,” Kohls said. “We’re down to maybe 15, but we keep plugging along and doing what we can. Everything we bring in with our fundraisers, we give back to our community.”
Giving to the library, the Gillett Historical Society and the local daycare are among the things the woman’s club does. Kohls said the club tries to bring in a guest speaker annually and makes sure all expenses are paid.
According to Kohls, her club and the library will be the first organizations in the city of Gillett to make it to 100 years of existence and service.
“No other club in town is as old as we are,” Kohls said. “That’s a plus.”
Kohls is proud that Gillett’s organization for women has made it to 100 at a time when other clubs have disbanded. She said, even with as few women involved, the club has managed to push for change and learned to evolve with the times.
“Everything we do, every few generations, it’s not done that way anymore,” Kohls said.
Among the ideas for honoring the centennial are offering a scholarship. The woman’s club regularly offers a scholarship on its own, but the proposed scholarship would be a combined effort between the club and the library, according to Stoner. Perhaps the library might do one on its own for anyone seeking to go to college to become an archivist or a librarian, she added.
The library is also considering an art contest involving high school students, as well as a time capsule to be buried for the next 25 or 50 years, according to Stoner. The library and the club are also looking at ideas for a float in the Gillett Independence Day Parade. Most of the ideas are still up in the air and not set in stone, she said.
“We’re just starting the process of looking into what we can do,” Stoner said.
One thing that is a go is what will be going on the side of the library. There is currently a barn quilt with books on it, but it is starting to decay and come loose from the building. Stoner said the library is planning to replace it with a centennial sign with the words “Celebrating 100 Years,” an image of a tiger standing on books and another that has a graphic about reading and learning.
Celebrating a library making it to 100 years is something worth being proud of, according to Kohls.
“There are libraries that are closing, community ones,” she said. “It’s just like churches. Memberships are limited, and things are changing.”
lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com
The Gillett Village Hall was built in 1905. The Gillett Public Library was located on the second floor when it opened its doors in 1927. (Contributed)
