Richmond centenarian receives national honor
June 4, 2010
The following is a press release from the Kentucky Education and Workforce Development Cabinet
Frank Joseph Carey, a Richmond centenarian, has been inducted into the 10² Talking Book Club, sponsored by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, a division of the Library of Congress (NLS).
Carey is one of only 16 Kentuckians honored to date by induction into the prestigious club, which was created by NLS to recognize the accomplishments of Talking Book patrons who are 100 years of age or older and continue to be active readers.
Carey has been using the Kentucky Talking Book Library since June 2009, and has read 86 books, averaging three books per week. He is registered through the Talking Book Library to download books from the Braille and Audio Reading Download site (BARD), a website where registered users can download books to listen to on a special digital player. The service is free of charge.
Currently his favorite authors are Elmore Leonard, John Grisham and James Patterson. "I love downloading the books of my choice from BARD," said Carey. "Listening to audio books is my main source of entertainment. I love stories, especially mystery and nonfiction. I don't know what I would do without audio books."
Carey has long been a fan of reading, as well as sports. He always loved reading, particularly as a teenager. He made sure to find time to read even as he pitched for his Bordentown High School, N.J. baseball team, played quarterback for the football team and played on the basketball team. He had to make a special effort to read, growing up in a home that had no gas, no electricity, no heat and no bathroom. He spent a lot of time as a child walking along the railroad tracks with a bucket, gathering chunks of coal that had fallen off of the coal cars and bringing them home for his parents to burn for heat.
After graduating from high school, Carey continued his love of reading and sports, playing intramural basketball at Rider University, then Rider College. Graduating from college during the Great Depression meant that Carey faced a tough job market, just as today's college graduates face. The 1931 Rider University graduate with a degree in business and banking was very pleased to secure a job with the S.S. Kresge Company for $12 a week. Carey advises today's students to "strive to get the best grades you can possibly get."
Carey worked for S.S. Kresge Company for 10 years, then worked at a plant in Trenton, N. J., helping make TM bombers for the Navy. At the end of the war he moved with his family to Miami, Fla., where he worked for 26 years at Miami International Airport, retiring from Eastern Airlines in 1974.
Carey has lived in Richmond with his daughter and son-in-law for five years. He enjoys following the University of Kentucky Wildcats, watching horseracing on TV and the occasional visit to Keeneland Race Track.
"At this age I like to listen to audio stories, watch TV and bet on the horses," he said.
Kentucky library honors four centenarians for their love of reading
October 11, 2006
The Kentucky Talking Book Library inducted four book-loving centenarians into the NLS 10² Talking-Book Club in the autumn of 2006. The library honored these individuals at personal ceremonies in their homes. Each woman grew up loving books, in a family that read together.
The centenarians—Clara Custer, 102, of Bowling Green; Marie Elliott, 103, of Springfield; Frances Harrison, 100, of Owensboro; and Helen Pohl, 103, of Lexington—are avid readers, each devouring fifty to eighty books a year. Elliott is the most voracious bibliophile of all, having read more than one thousand books over the past ten years. All inductees received a 10² Club certificate, a letter signed by NLS director Frank Kurt Cylke, and a gold-tone 10² Club pin.
The first ceremony, held in early October, honored Pohl, the first Kentuckian to join the 10² Club. The event included accolades from the first lady of Kentucky, poetry readings by honoree Pohl, and a television broadcast of the gathering on the evening news. Pohl resides at the Lafayette, an independent-living facility, which supports an active book club.
At Pohl's induction ceremony, Kentucky's first lady Glenna Fletcher praised Pohl's love of literature. She presented Pohl with an Unbridled Spirit award, which is given to an individual who has accomplished something for the good of the commonwealth. "I am honored to recognize her amazing dedication to learning," Fletcher said.
"Receiving this honor and having the first lady here with me makes this the proudest day of my life," Pohl responded. The former university drama and high school literature teacher delighted the audience by reciting James Whitcomb Riley's poem "Little Orphant Annie."
Raised without television or radio, Pohl's family read together. She read Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist when she was nine years old. "In my family, education was like a religion. I decided that books would always be my constant companion," she said.
"In the one year she has been listening to talking books, she has read sixty-two books," noted regional librarian Barbara Penegor. Pohl's favorite is Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. She enjoys reading Shakespeare ("He knew the human heart"), Robert Louis Stevenson, and John Jakes.
In another October ceremony, Clara Custer, 102, of Bowling Green, hosted regional librarian Barbara Penegor and participants from the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives in her home. Custer was born in Germany, where her mother read fairy tales to her when she was a girl. Her family immigrated to America in the 1900s, entering the country through Ellis Island. Custer attended nursing school after graduating from high school, and worked as a nurse until retiring at age sixty-nine, when she began a life of travel by cruise ship and motorcoach. A talking-book patron since February 2006, Custer has already completed more than eighty books. Like Pohl, Custer's favorite is Gone with the Wind. She likes authors Nicholas Sparks, Richard Paul Evans, James Patterson, Jonathan Kellerman, Danielle Steel, and Nora Roberts.
Harrison was born in rural Illinois and grew up enjoying reading more than doing her chores. She started school when she was five years old, in a two-room schoolhouse. Unable to afford college during the Great Depression, she attended nursing school at Indiana University, which then cost $50 a year. Currently, Harrison enjoys reading history and just finished a biography of Abraham Lincoln. "Mrs. Harrison has been a talking-book patron since 2003 and has read 166 books," Penegor said.
Elliott has read more talking books than the other centenarians combined: 1,160 books since 1997. As a child, Elliott attended school only through the eighth grade, but she didn't' stop learning. Because Washington County didn't have a high school, she attended eighth grade three times to learn as much as she could. Elliott is still soaking up knowledge, and currently enjoys the books of Janette Oke.