Local News - June 2003

Shanklin library to plant memorial garden

By JACOB RUDOLPH, Staff Writer

With the Florence Soule Shanklin Memorial Library now open, organizers are looking into the woods for the next phase of library development.

The Memorial Gardens is billed to be a sprawling layout of walking trails, flower beds, wildflower glens, stone walls, footbridges, benches and reading nooks.

The three-acre park is already developed in the mind of Walter Shanklin, who knows the now-empty wooded palette like the back of his hand.

“Florence loved it here –– it was her favorite spot in the world,” Shanklin, 83, said of his late wife’s fondness with the woods adjacent to the library. “Any number of Sundays, we’d just walk these woods together.”

The memory of his wife, who died suddenly from a heart attack nearly four years ago, is Shanklin’s motivation for bringing the library to Fairfield Forest Road and for developing the gardens.

Two months after Florence died, Shanklin began a whirlwind tour of Southeastern libraries, destined to learn as much as he could about libraries before helping to bring one to east Lincoln.

Florence loved libraries and two of Shanklin’s daughters are librarians in Lincoln County.

Almost four years ago, Shanklin donated the land for the library and gardens to the county. In March of this year, the monetary goal for the interior of the library was met. That same month, the Memorial Garden Committee was formed.

“We wanted to concentrate on opening the library first, before we started working on the gardens,” Shanklin said.

The seven-member committee is looking to raise $25,000 to 30,000 to get the project underway. Construction will move ahead in many phases –– clearing the 1/4-mile walking trail is first on the agenda.

The garden will never be finished, Shanklin said, it will always change, evolve and continue as a labor of love.

The Friends of the East Lincoln Branch Library, which headed up the library fund-raising will also spearhead this new effort.

Without the “friends,” Shanklin said, who raised nearly $300,000 for the library, there would be no permanent library in east Lincoln and no garden.

Sylvia Holmes, a member of the Friends of the East Lincoln Branch Library, said the gardens will certainly act to complement the library and the east Lincoln community.

“The garden is going to supply a different feature to the community that will be both separate and one with the library,” Holmes said.

Shanklin has enlisted the help of many experts for this project –– horticulturists, landscape architects, a rose expert and even a forest ranger have walked the property.

Beyond the roses and Florence’s azaleas, which will certainly dot the landscape of the gardens, Shanklin is insistent upon planting cosmus. It is a beautiful wildflower, Shanklin said, and Florence’s favorite.

As he stands amongst the trees and chirping birds, just yards from the library’s large, picture windows, Shanklin’s eyes fill with tears as he thinks of his late wife.

She loved nature, horses and swimming. She was an expert gardener and enjoyed to fox hunt.

More than anything, however, she was a loving wife and mother, Shanklin said.

“She was just a remarkable person,” Shanklin said. “Fully dedicated to her family.”

She is also the garden’s namesake and the person Shanklin remembers when he walks through the woods; when he envisions the gardens.

“This garden will be a tranquillity base,” Shanklin said. “A place where you can cry in periods of sorrow or run with joy.”

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Staff Writer Jacob Rudolph can be reached at 704-735-3031 or jacobrudolph@ltnews.com.

© 2001 Lincoln Times-News  

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