What happens when you seek an audience with Kathy Ryan

It’s extremely easy to become enchanted with Kathy Ryan. All you have to do is sit down with her for either a brief or an extended conversation. Ms. Ryan is chair of the Friends of the Library, which operates the Library’s Thrift Shop, and is listed on the city’s website as a member of the Library Board. She is also the wife of Dan Ryan, someone I met when he was a member of Kyle’s Planning & Zoning Commission. Dan Ryan is also someone I came to have a lot of respect for. He was the rarity: a leader in Kyle who not only thought about Kyle in the present tense but actually had a vision of what Kyle should become. In talking this past weekend with his spouse I thought back to the days before the Internet when, if you needed to conduct research, you trekked off to the library. I quickly realized that, today, if you want to do research on the Kyle Library, you trek off to seek an audience with Kathy Ryan.

I trekked off to seek an audience with Kathy Ryan because I heard rumors of a riff between the city and the Friends of the Library and I wanted to check on the relationship from the library’s volunteers' point of view — specifically whether the Friends had felt any pressure on it being applied by City Hall. I must also admit I was concerned about a line item in the city managers’ proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year — a bunch of zeroes in the box listing the amount of money the city planned on spending for new library books.

"Not at all," she told me. "The Friends of the Library and the City have a very cordial relationship. We have had for years. We’re really independent of them. It took a little while to establish that because you know how it is — you have a new city manager and it takes time for him to get acclimated, then another one shows up. And also city staff, as the city grew and grew and added people, there’s a little confusion. They realize now we’re a 501.C.3. We run our own business (the Thrift Shop at the corner of West Lockhart and North Front streets, right behind City Hall) and donate the money ($34,400 per year over the last 15 years) to the library. That’s our purpose."

She assured me that if any undue pressure was being applied, she would be the one who would know about it.

She also told me later that she had looked at that budget item I was concerned about "and the book budget is fine. There are two line items that pertain to books."

Which brings me back to something I mentioned above — "if you want to do research on the Kyle Library, you trek off to seek an audience with Kathy Ryan."

"I grew up in Port Arthur — big time oil money there," she told me. "We had this gorgeous library, good schools. I moved to Kyle in 2000 and immediately went to the library because I’m a library lover. It was originally a little tiny stone building that’s across from Kyle Elementary on Blanco."

That came about, she told me, because two other local women, Bobby Word and Blanche Richmond, decided the city needed a community library.

"They got people to donate books, and they used a shelf in the back of the Bon Ton grocery store located where City Hall is now where people could come and check out books," she said. "But soon they needed a little more space and they wanted to be open more hours, so the city let them use a little back room in City Hall (the old City Hall which still stands on the downtown square)."

She said Jack Johnson, the owner of Halifax Ranch, offered to provide the money to build a new library. So a stand-alone library was built in 1961 on property that had belonged to the school right in front of Kyle Elementary "and then they added on to that twice."

She said both the county and the city "gave a little money" to keep the library operating and then the Friends of the Library started and raised money through cake sales and other activities. "They actually started the Fair on the Square which later evolved into what today is Founders Day," she said.

She said Johnson continued to support the library through the years and, to recognize his contributions, when the current library was built, the area containing the two community rooms was named in honor of Jack and Burdine Johnson.

But back to that 1961 library. She said one member of the Friends of the Library discovered the library in Marble Falls had a thrift store "so she went up there and they taught her how to run a thrift store."

The first library thrift store in Kyle, Ms. Ryan said, opened in an old bank building that was located where Room 111 is now on West Center Street. "Mr. Johnson came in and was very impressed with the effort they were making to support the library" and told them he would give them the money for the construction of their own building at the location where the Library Thrift Shop is now. That happened in 1990. In 1999, the building was expanded "and then we renovated the whole building in 2014."

"We feel right now our biggest problem is marketing," she admitted, "We need more customers and the only to get them is for people to know we exist."

Of course the question is why would anyone want to seek out and go to the Library Thrift Shop.

"You can buy clothing at very reduced prices," she said. "And sometimes people give things that are brand new. It’s amazing the stuff that shows up. They have everything — shoes, purses, clothing, dishes, housewares, electronics. We used to laugh — we always called it Kyle’s first department store because they had everything. My daughter lives in San Antonio and she can afford to buy clothes anywhere, yet she buys all her kids’ clothes at the Thrift Shop. They love to go to the Thrift Shop.

"We also serve the low income population in Kyle. There are a group of people here who really need to have some very inexpensive materials for clothing, shoes, whatever. If there’s a disaster, people come there because we help out disaster victims. There’s a group that comes in and picks up used clothing for a men’s homeless shelter and another group provides items to a children’s home.

"We encourage everyone to support the Thrift Shop by bringing us their gently used items, clothing, housewares, crafts, small electronics, books and the like," she told me. "The Thrift Shop serves a wonderful purpose in Kyle and all the revenue goes to support the library."

But back to the library and the story of how the library moved from that location on Blanco to its present headquarters on Scott Street. Ms. Ryan told me former City Manager Tom Mattis began the push for a new library building, but at the time a search for property on which to locate it began, around 2006, H-E-B decided to locate a store in Kyle "and the city’s staff was completely swamped with that huge project. So the library got put on hold."

The current building finally opened in 2012, "during the real drop in the economy, when the city was just strapped for cash. So for the first two years, this library operated with just a skeleton staff because there really wasn’t any funds."

It’s been a long journey and Ms. Ryan told me "Every time I walk into this building I can’t believe it really exists, knowing how hard we worked to get it."