Sharon Quicker This is Me

 Web References

1. 1. Sheboygan-Press: Her heart is an open book

   www.wisinfo.com/sheboyganpress - [Cached]

   Published on: 2/29/2004   Last Visited: 2/29/2004

   Sharon Quicker lives for and loves Mead Public Library. When she's there she even checks out extra books that she doesn't intend to read - just in case a good snowstorm shuts down the city for a day or she can't get out of the house.
   
   Quicker, 59, who lives near Riverdale Country Club, would eat, drink and sleep Mead Library, too, if that were possible. The place is "my passion," she says.
   
   She's been president of the library board, was president of the Friends of Mead Library board for four years, has been on the foundation board since 1994 plus a term as vice president, and she's a charter member of the Friends group which began in 1972, over 30 years ago. And don't forget, she's a charter member of the Renaissance Society, Mead's endowment group.
   
   She started the fund-raiser, "A Tisket, a Tasket, a Literary Basket," after reading about it on the Internet, from its beginnings in Reno, Nev. After 12 years, there will be no more participation next year in the event by the Mead Friends group.
   
   "We wanted to go out on a high," she says, but noted they did make a video of how they did it, just in case it is revived in a number of years.
   
   "The Friends need to come up with their own fund-raiser - we're thinking maybe a dinner among the stacks."
   
   Quicker loves Sheboygan too, but would love to leave for two months every winter if she could.
   
   Three years ago, she retired as assistant librarian at The University of Wisconsin-Sheboygan after 28 years. She saw the growth of the UWS library through two remodelings and the onset of computer technology to a growing enrollment, now about 1,000 students.
   
   Quicker's own education started at Grant School in Sheboygan. She fondly remembers, as many 50-plus-year-olds will, the Readers-Round-Up program that was broadcast over the radio.
   
   Jump to 2002, when Quicker found that the book group at Mead wasn't enough to feed her reading addiction. She started "The Book Bags" for older women, gathering once a month on rotation at members' homes.
   
   "We read all books. Not the same one for everyone," she said. "We gossip, too."
   
   She reads mostly at night, never in bed, "because I'd fall asleep," she says, noting she generally has three books going at the same time.
   
   She's making sure her two grandsons grow up with a love for reading. She's bought more than 400 books for them, and that will probably be accelerated in May when her third grandchild is born. She is quite happy that the two boys, Mitchel, 5 and Michael, 4, live within two miles of her house, "and we see them every day."
   
   Soon she'll be able to drop the boys off at Mead's third-floor Children's Library Center, and find her way to the reading and periodicals room that hopefully will be ready in June on the south end of the third floor.