'Rockdale library has impressive collection' by Jeanne Williams.Temple Daily Telegram

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Rockdale library has impressive collection

by Jeanne Williams

Temple Daily Telegram - November 17, 2008

The Lucy Hill Patterson Memorial Library was named to honor

the former Rockdale resident whose son, California neurosurgeon

Dr. George Patterson, donated funds to build the library

and later the civic center. (Shirley Williams/Telegram)

ROCKDALE - “It’s like the salmon, which goes to sea, but always

returns to its native stream. A spirit must have guided me in

the selection of Rockdale.”

Dr. George Patterson’s epigrammatic, impromptu response to a local journalist’s query -

why Rockdale, not Hillsboro where Patterson was born, benefited from the family gift -

probably was not the reporter’s hoped-for, profound statement worthy of the occasion,

the May 25, 1963, dedication of The Lucy Hill Patterson Memorial Library. The doctor’s

ambiguous reference to sentiment was buried in the story.

Nevertheless, Patterson, obviously a man of few words, became a riveted constituent of

Rockdale history when he donated to the city $12,500 toward a dynamic community

fundraiser to build a $30,000 library.

Ultimately, the town’s first public library was named in honor of Patterson’s mother,

who was born in Rockdale Sept. 17, 1879, and spent an obscure childhood in the booming

frontier railroad town. Lucy Hill later met and married Charles Patterson, and moved to

Hillsboro where she lived until her death on March 16, 1961.

George Patterson, choosing Rockdale as his beneficiary of cash, also bestowed gifts by

the volume: 50 first-edition books, including Margaret Mitchell’s novel “Gone With the

Wind,” “Paradise Lost” by John Milton, and “Mountain Meadows Massacre” by Juanita

Brooks, in addition to famous works of Charles Dickens, Jack London, John Steinbeck,

Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Walt Whitman, Sherwood Anderson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,

Eugene O’Neill, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thornton Wilder, F. Scott Fitzgerald and

other prominent authors.

The distinguished California neurosurgeon also gave the Rockdale library an original

letter from George Washington dated Aug. 18, 1783, that endorsed the return of Timothy

Brinley Mount to his home. Brinley had been thought by his friends and neighbors to be a

Tory, but actually was a spy in Washington’s army.

Other unusual additions to the Patterson collection are two personal missives from

author Margaret Mitchell; eight oil paintings by artist Bill Bender, including “Nature’s

Symphony,” “Saquaro Cactus” and “Two Shades of Morning”; artist Robert Wood’s “Laguna

Beach” and “Spanish Oaks and Autumn Gold”; a portrait of Lucy Hill Patterson by artist

Armarel Marmin; two bluebonnet landscapes created by renowned Texas artist Palmer

Chrisman of Temple; Patterson’s portrait by Bill Hampton; and various other artists’

work.

Patterson’s gifts to Rockdale included Victorian and Queen Anne furniture, with a

showcase hand-painted French-style escritoire - a charming lady’s desk, equipped with an

inset clock, drawers and candle holders. While most of Patterson’s extensive library

collection is displayed on the premises, rare items are kept in the city vault.

Librarian Melanie Todd said the Rockdale library’s history is recorded in numerous

scrapbooks and albums filled with newspaper clippings, letters and photographs,

including pictures of Mrs. Patterson as a child in Rockdale.

Mrs. Todd recalled meeting the executor of the Patterson estate in the 1990s when the

Patterson Community Center on Mill Avenue near Fair Park was expanded. The library

actively promotes the museum-quality displays that adorn the building as well as the

extensive collection of rare books and letters through various special theme exhibits.

Meanwhile, art and furniture from the Patterson estate are placed throughout the

building for the public to enjoy, as well as a Kabuki Samurai doll, a gift to Alcoa from

Komatsu Ltd.; an aluminum splash wall hanging donated by Alcoa; and photographs

including a picture taken by David Galbreath of the Sugarloaf Mountain Bridge; the old

St. Joseph’s Catholic Church photographed by Dr. Lucile Estell; a Rockdale street scene,

circa 1956; and a Saturday Evening Post photograph donated by author and Saturday

Evening Post writer George Sessions Perry, a Rockdale native.

Patterson died in a fire in Los Angeles in 1976, and he further provided for Rockdale in

his will, giving additional funds to expand and remodel the library in 1980 and to build

and later expand the Community Center near Fair Park.

Art in the library at 201 Ackerman St. in downtown Rockdale is a silent sideline to the

activities of the book center, which began in 1954 when volunteers went house-to-house

to raise $500 and collect used books to start a library, according to a Peggy Cooke

article in The Rockdale Reporter.

Rockdale’s first library found a home on the second floor of Rockdale City Hall and

opened a year after the citywide book drive, augmented by the loan of volumes from the

Texas State Library, its shelves stocked with more than 2,000 hardbacks. The library

quickly outgrew its lackluster headquarters, and in 1957, an effort began to raise money

for the town’s first public library building at its present site. Patterson’s endowment

matched by the city and other donations made the dream for a library building a reality.

Today, The Lucy Hill Patterson Memorial Library has an extensive collection of books, a

children’s library, public computers, an impressive genealogy section and history

center, which opened in 2003, and a section dedicated to George Sessions Perry.

Remarkable, too, is the library’s remarkable upshot from lowly institution that borrowed

the books it loaned the public, to a valuable state-of-the-art hub of literary

activities.

“I don’t believe any other library has a history quite as interesting as ours,” Mrs.

Todd said.

Lucy Hill Patterson Memorial Library, Rockdale, TX