For the past 20 years, when Mother Goose has been singing songs and reading books to children during her weekly storytime sessions at the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library, she has had help.
Clyde Hollis has been sitting beneath the second story window, watching his grandchildren play. He has also acted as Mother Goose’s assistant, known as “Pepe” to the children. The role, he said, has helped him to feel more like a kid himself.
“It’s been fun,” Hollis told The Dispatch before storytime began on Thursday. “You can come up here, and in an hour with these kids, you get relaxed. Some of your thoughts and cares kind of go by the wayside when you’re dealing with little children.”
Hollis grew up around the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library. In a document he gave The Dispatch, Hollis said he remembers checking out books as early as five or six years old, when the library was still located in the old house behind where St. Paul’s Episcopal Church is located.
Over the years, Hollis developed a love of reading, both in and out of the library. He still remembers when his fifth grade teacher assigned him his first book report. He also remembers when the library moved to the old S.D. Lee High School band building in the 1960s, and eventually, when Chebie Bateman spearheaded a drive to build the library’s current location in the 1970s.
At the time, Hollis was in his mid-twenties, and he and his partners had just started Graham Roofing. One of the company’s first important jobs was to put the roof on the new library building, he said.
“This building was the talk of the town,” Hollis said. “You can look around and see that this is the nicest building in Columbus. You know, a standalone building that looks nice. And we got to put the first roof on it when it was built.”
By the 1980s, Edwina Williams (Mother Goose) joined the library’s staff as its children’s librarian, and some of Hollis’s three children started attending her story hour. Eventually, Hollis would serve on the library’s board of directors for several years.
But it wasn’t until Hollis’s first grandchild, Macy, was born in the early 2000s that he started to faithfully attend every Thursday. And then, his other six grandchildren kept coming, each born about three years apart. All seven, he brought to see Mother Goose for her story hour.
“He would bring his baby grandchildren,” Williams said. “He would hold them in his arms… and he’s been so faithful to me every Thursday morning at 10 o’clock. … If he had one grandchild, he would bring that child. Then, when two arrived, he would bring those two.”
Hollis said Mother Goose has always enchanted young children, including his grandchildren, holding their attention and teaching them manners and reading skills. One thing she always emphasizes, he said, is that “two is a couple.”
Over time, Hollis became familiar with Mother Goose’s routine, and when she asked him to start helping her with things like getting out the instruments, setting up some parts of story hour and counting attendees, he jumped in to help.
On Thursday, Mother Goose led the children through a few songs, including the hokey pokey. Up next, she held a brief show and tell. Then, there was a “race” of robotic stuffed animals running toward a finish line. And so the story hour went on.
Each time she transitioned between tasks, she turned to ask “Pepe” what should come next.
Hollis would chime in, directing her on the next stage of the story hour. When a robotic dinosaur wasn’t working the way it should during the “race,” Hollis fiddled with it until it jumped to life, going on to cross the finish line before any of the other animals.
Williams said Hollis typically does all of these things at every story hour, always done so with a positive attitude for the children.
“He always has a smile on his face,” Williams said.
But next week will be Hollis’ last storytime with Mother Goose, he told The Dispatch, since his grandchildren are getting older. His oldest grandchild, Macy, is now 22-years-old and attending veterinary school at Mississippi State University.
“My last grandchild will start kindergarten in a week,” Hollis said. “And so, I’ll retire.”
Hollis said “it has been my pleasure to help Mother Goose in a small way” during storytime over the past 20 years.
“I’ll find something else soon,” he joked.
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