Teresa Stephenson also volunteers at Morgan Hill’s Wildlife Education and Rehabilitation Center
Published in the January 20 – February 2, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Robert Airoldi
Photo by Marty Cheek
President of the Friends of the Morgan Hill Library Teresa Stephenson in the bookstore at the library. The Friends raise money through books sales to help with children’s programs and other items needed at the library.
Teresa Stephenson loves books. During the day she’s surrounded by thousands of books at the Friends of the Library store inside the Morgan Hill Library where she spends many hours sorting through the donations that come in daily. At home, she has “more books than I could read in my lifetime,” she said.
“Growing up in Brooklyn I used to walk to public library nearly everyday and take books out,” she said. “It was just something I always loved to do.”
She’s taken that love for books and parlayed it into a 16-year volunteer position at the Friends of the Morgan Hill Library, the fundraising arm of the Morgan Hill Library.
Her involvement began in 2000 before the new library opened in 2007 and she is serving as the president this year and has served in every position except treasurer.
She’s pleased with where the library has come but is also looking forward to the planned expansion. In the coming years, construction will begin on the library to expand it to 36,272 square feet, more than a 37 percent increase over the current library’s footprint. A new patio and “reading garden” area will also provide 1,432 square feet in additional outdoor public usage including community events. For the money, library users will gain a 2,800-square-foot children’s storytime and activity room located adjacent to the kids section. The adult section will also be expanded by 1,700 square feet, providing more shelving space.
“If we can get a new children’s area and bookstore, that would go a long way,” Stephenson said. “It will be nice to have a dedicated area for children.”
The Friends get the books for their sales from the library, which recycles its discards, and the community which donates boxes and bags of books, she said.
Research is done on all non-fiction works to determine their value. Volunteer Roberta Henderson manages an Amazon bookstore, averaging several hundred books at a time.
One year, someone donated an old business book, that after researched, was found to be valuable and sold for $750.
The Friends cleared more than $14,000 from that online site in 2015, and averages about $2,000 from each of its three yearly book sales. Last year they donated $60,000 to the library for new shelves the county library system couldn’t afford.
“We’ve been very lucky because we’ve been able to do everything (librarian) Peggy (Tomaso) has asked us for,” Stephenson said. “It’s truly amazing.”
The Friends are a group of about 200 people, 80 of whom volunteer on a regular basis in the store, sorting books or helping out at the book sales.
Stephenson, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., came to California in the early 1960s with her first husband. Pregnant at the time, she later found a job at IBM on the assembly line in 1966, a time when all women were wearing skirts at work. Her first job — dipping wires in solder for eight hours a day. But she was determined to learn more, so she took continuing education classes that IBM offered its employees. She passed the assembler program language and passed the data processing aptitude test, prompting her manager and his boss to promote her. Stephenson eventually retired from IBM and took the offered buyout in 1992. That buyout ended in 1996 and she went back to work as a consultant on the Y2K effort as the century turned.
She also volunteers at the Wildlife Education and Rehabilitation Center in west Morgan Hill for the past 15 years and now she’s on the nonprofit’s board of directors.
“It’s always an amazing experience when I get to hold an owl or an eagle on my arm,” she said.
Just this past summer she had both hips replaced, then took a vacation to Europe.
She divorced her first husband and remarried and has now been married for 40 years. She has a daughter, now 51, from her first marriage and a stepson, now 45. She also has two grandsons in college.
“I like to find ways to help the community,” she said. “(WERC and the library) are the two things I’m most interested in, wildlife and books.”
After living for years in San Jose, she and her husband longed for a more simple existence. They moved and bought a home here in 1985, though the couple recently downsized to a smaller home on West Dunne Avenue.
“I used to have to borrow books as a kid and always wanted to own them,” she said of her extensive collection. “When we downsized, I moved 80 boxes of books into my house.”
She said she stays busy with her two volunteer positions.
“At my stage in life, it’s plenty,” the 70-year-old said.
And, after more than 30 years, she said she continues to love living in Morgan Hill.
“It’s a beautiful place and the people are just great,” she said. “It’s not crowded. It’s home.”
