My Father's Favorite Library, by Chris Peters

My Father's Favorite Libraries

 

Rather than write about my own favorite library, I want to say a little about my Father’s favorites, because his choices had a wonderful impact on my life, reading and otherwise.

 

I was born in 1944, in Pasadena, California, into a large book loving family. My father was a prominent lawyer in Los Angeles. My mother and father assembled an excellent home library, and put in special built-in shelves through the house. They loved books, bookstores…and libraries.

 

Out of these, my father had a number of favorite libraries.

 

After William Randolph Hearst died, my father spent weeks leading a team of appraisers through Hearst Castle to come up with numbers for the California inheritance taxes. There was a Gutenberg bible, first editions of all sorts. Wonderful stuff everywhere.

 

But it wasn’t his favorite library. The Los Angeles and Beverly Hills libraries were close and had wonderful resources.  But there were more libraries.

 

In 1957, (with the money from the Hearst evaluation – you got a percentage, in those days!) my parents took my brothers and I to Rome. It was a meeting of the International Bar Association, and my dad led the California Bar group. As such, he was invited to meet the Pope, and he got to visit the Vatican Library, which was filled with astounding volumes. 

 

Amazing as it was, the Vatican Library wasn’t my Dad’s favorite.

 

The Huntington Library (built by the old robber baron’s money) was just 20 minutes away from our house and another favorite of my parents. We joined (and I was able to go and study there, and do research.) But not Dad’s top favorite.

 

Before that, at UC Berkeley as an undergrad (and later law student) he practically lived at the Doe Memorial Library.

 

The Doe was also important in another way: there were all night study rooms available.  This was often where he worked to support himself and my mother, late at night, with his “52 Assistants.”

 

(In point of fact, Dad sometimes really had a “53rd Assistant” – one of the “strangers” who drifted into the game was, in fact, his friend Jack-- later to be a champion bridge and poker player. Never had a job in his life, did Jack, that didn’t use a deck of cards.  But that was in the future; at that point he was just a young guy who had a memory and a talent for cards.  Afterwards, they’d split the take. Hey, Dad was going to be a lawyer, alright?)

 

 

None of these were my Father’s favorite library however; for that, you have to further back. 

 

Before he worked with movie stars, and Howard Hughes, before he argued cases before the Supreme Court, you have to go all the way back to his childhood.

 

He was born in 1902, one of nine children on a cold water farm in the hard dirt of Fresno, California.

 

And in 1904, the Fresno Carnegie Library opened. And free access to books profoundly changed the direction of my father’s life. 

 

That was always my Father’s favorite library.