Outlasting tough times: Carroll County stories

The second in a series of Carroll County on the Same Page programs planned around The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, will beWednesday, Oct. 3, at 7 p.m. at the Camden Public Library. Carroll County natives PhyllisMoore andMarion Hathaway will speak.

The Glass Castle is a memoir of a family remarkable for its love and resiliency, but whose survival methods and lifestyle are generally deemed socially unacceptable in modern times. Outlasting Tough Times is the Carroll County connection to the story. Whether you have read the book or not, this program will be a unique opportunity to hear descriptions of life in this county from a viewpoint that challenges commonly held ideas about the good old days.

Moore is the curator of the Carroll County Historical Museum and the county's genealogy expert. She has made the procurement, preservation and documentation of Carroll County history and artifacts her life's work, bringing museum collections into the digital and Internet age. She will pull vignettes from Carroll County history about families who found ways to survive difficult times and thrive in spite of hardship.

Hathaway is a Camden resident whose background includes serving as a Naval medic for the D-Day invasion and the Okinawa campaign. He earned a Master's degree in social work from the University of Illinois. His career credits include initiating the Wheaton, Illinois Public Schools Social Work Program and serving as coordinator for Extraordinary Services for the Cooperative Association for Special Education in the western suburbs of Chicago.

He was one in a family of 16 children growing up in Carroll County during the Depression. He will offer his perspective of those times, the impact those experiences had on his life, and draw parallels to the lives of the children in The Glass Castle.

Carroll County on the Same Page is a project of the Camden, Delphi, and Flora libraries with the purpose of building a better community through reading, and the sharing and discussion of ideas. Copies of The Glass Castle are available at each of the three public libraries and may be borrowed by anyone in the county.