She may have left Los Angeles virtually empty-handed but when she arrived home in National City, she came bearing gifts.
Miss Johnson, as she was referred to in the March 6, 1925 edition of The National City News, travelled to the City of Angels looking for deal on books she could bring back to the city’s library. By the time she arrived at the book sale, however, the quality was less than desirable. But the trip wasn’t a complete loss.
While attending a library convention in Riverside she learned that “the legality of a pay shelf in a free public library” was illegal.
The issue was a “bone of contention” among board members since the library’s first days, according to the article. But Miss Johnson’s discovery presumably saved the library future legal headaches.
(As far as clarifying if a pay shelf was a shelf in which certain books were displayed in exchange for a fee from the publisher, the article did not elaborate and I couldn’t find any mention of the term in any library history references.)
That same year in the same issue Mary Powell Porter wrote about Sweetwater High School’s basketball championship teams. The 1925 girls champions—Edna Eicke, Helen Orrell, Gertrude Peterman, Orva Johnson, Faye Mathews, Alice Pecka, Zona Smith, and Ruby Addis—were each awarded a Sweetwater High letter sweater.
Roughly 100 years ago, around this time, the women mentioned were going about their business in their daily lives. Putting in hours at work, working hard at practice.
Then and now their actions may have seemed inconsequential. Mundane. What they did certainly did not register on the national or international stage.
But in their own way Miss Johnson, Mary Powell Porter and the girls of the Sweetwater High School championship high school team contributed to the well-being of their community. Whether it was resolving a civic matter or bringing civic pride to small contingent of National City residents, they made the place they called home, a little better.
In addition to the grand gestures and magnificent success, it’s those sorts of small accomplishments that we should also keep in mind during March’s Women’s History month.
