Letter: Inklings

Submitted by Bob Warfield, Lakewood.

Thinking back to first inklings, spun from imaginings, scraped from the residue of conversation, ginned-up in discussion around the coffee served, second cup or third at Burs, I’m called to remember the first outline of what became Our Town, our very own prospering and happy local jurisdiction. Tracing definition to print a map at the dawn of digital was tricky, but there was a guy, a Friend of the Lakewood Library, who could do it, and did. 

The several iterations required ran a tab to 600, 1989 dollars cash, paid to draw the boundary, early descriptions of which were confirmed by the odometer on a bicycle and numerous trips to visit old ledgers bound and filed, archived by Commonwealth Title (“Merged” from former existence (Ticor, Chicago(?); 1003 Pacific Av, Tacoma, WA) and the Pierce County Assessor. Persistence paid as well. And following several failed attempts, the once impossible occurred. In the gathering tilt of our planet toward spring in 1996, Lakewood became a CITY. 

Since those early days, digital has come a long way, and with the miracle of printed circuits and internet you can now draw your own map from “PUBLIC GIS.” Today, larded with linked information, even history, every speck of land constituting City of Lakewood or Pierce County, can be pictured before your scrolling eyes in the comfort of home, cubicle or office. With curiosity, a swish and click of your resident mouse, you can probably find similar information in graphic color from Maine to Kansas to Mount Rainier. You can even transport your eyes to a street or off-ramp to imagine daylight presence at location with vertical relief. 

Scrolling back to Lakewood, today and here, we face one salient fact: That library of Friend’s fellowship, that three-storied palace of stories, familiar edifice of cherished memory, happy discovery and wonder, occupies two acres. Two acres is barely half the space one needs to meet contemporary library standards accessible on one level.  

Curbside, scrolling further through Public GIS, “Downtown Plans” and boundaries of “existing convention” aside, one can plainly see that there is no currently available four-acre space within city limits for the library Lakewood needs. “Tenzler,” as an accessible, contemporary, full-service library, is effectively history, regardless of condition or the passions that any one of us may bring to related discussion. (This fact was evident prior to and throughout “process” by the Citizen’s Advisory Committee, meeting June – November, 2022.)

A solution to the Lakewood’s library dilemma requires fresh thinking, new inklings. Together, we face two problems. One is the space that any competent architect, city planner or librarian can discern and consider. The other problem is the “existing convention” that keeps us boxed into a suspension of possibility, confined in thinking and stoppered imagination to where “the sidewalk ends.” 

What is a library for Lakewood – Is it simply a matter of budget choice for a system governed by five trustees and the flip charts of a junior taxing district? Or could it be a question of what does it mean, really mean, to be a city? 

The inklings that led to the vision that embraced imagination that assumed responsibility that delivered a future for Lakewood to become and ever to be a place incorporating such rich cultural diversity, such tapestry of shared and aspiring affections as we enjoy begin in the glimmerings of the hope and outlook of every caring citizen passing here who seeks and builds community. If we think and dwell in a box of convention, its walls confine. But open the walls, window and portal a passage for progress, and it will follow – not to a “field of dreams,” but to one of expansive cooperating partnership and actual achievement worthy of our opportunity, of our passage, of our possibility. 

Pursuit of this partnership of opportunity will require that City of Lakewood assume greater interest in outcome, accept apportioned burden and bear responsibility – take the lead. That journey begins here, today, with Mayor Whalen and each member of our City Council. The library venture will not be easy, nor will it come without cost and commitment. But every caring citizen, neighbor and agent of our city will be with you, to lead the way, into the journey ahead. City of Lakewood will be distinguished thereby and Pierce County Libraries enhanced. 

A big vision, out of the box, sees big possibility: Recreation for a fabulous urban “real” wetland; Extension of an overdue cultural bridge toward Lakewood’s emerging International Community; Relief for Pierce County Parks through the acquired wetland surround; Improved recreational access in the midst of a major residential community; Siting for a “Learning Center Library campus, walkable to proximate established schools – and all on a bus route, salving public transit concerns, clearing ivy, saving oak trees. What more is there to want? Money! Vision! Courage! May patience and positive determination inspire and lead us every step to find and forge the cooperation and commitment required. 

New libraries for Lakewood and Tillicum will take a lot of time and a lot of people with a lot of heart. It will take convergence and determination, vision and cooperation, surpassing everything that we in community have accomplished since that spring in ’96. Over the coming century, the present challenge and opportunity of our libraries will stand among the foremost projects defining our city. As there will be no substitute for excellence, let us open the box, fold the “blue tarp” of regrets, set doubt aside, and proceed with vision and courage to build the legacy libraries that Lakewood deserves.   

Respectfully, at your service.