Jim Dull stands in the creek, waist-high in water, raking at a dam. He yanks out tree branches, moss, mud, leaves and more branches. Everything is entangled, intertwined and wedged together, strong enough to hold back a stream and flood a local resident’s yard. But from the instant he starts to rake, the dam comes apart and the water starts to flow. Dull almost seems disappointed. “They didn’t do a good job,” he says. He's talking about beavers. This dam near Coburn Rd off of M-37 in Hastings Township took just five minutes to disassemble. It must have been some younger beavers, Dull says. A good dam, one made by the mother and father, could take 30 minutes of ripping and pulling and tearing to break apart. “Man, you gotta appreciate it,” Dull says. “Anybody that is as ambitious as they are. How many people do you know work all night long to get something built? I know a lot of people that don't work at all.” After years as an excavator, homebuilder and county commissioner of District 7 in southeastern Barry County, Dull took over as drain commissioner in 2016. And, when he started, people kept calling him about beavers. A beaver's in the backyard, they would say. It had clogged up the drain and the road was flooded. Dull had to learn about beavers quickly. As drain commissioner, he has to clear every dam that clogs a county drain – in a county with nearly 330 lakes, he says. Even if it’s not a county drain, if someone calls and needs help clearing a dam, the drain commissioner will go out and clear the dam. “We try our damnedest to try,” he says. Dull doesn’t deal with just a beaver here or there. During the peak months in the spring and fall, he deals with them on a daily basis. Last year, the drain commission team caught nearly 30 beavers. If they don’t trap them, Dull says, the beavers will come back the next day and the next day and the next day. But Dull doesn’t mind it. He couldn’t imagine working a desk job. He forces himself to spend 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. in the office every day and then he’s out. He’s out looking at drains, answering calls on his flip phone, driving through the county with paper maps and dealing with the beavers. His truck is littered with equipment he might need on the road – scissors, bug spray, jackets, a deflated fitness ball, camouflage boots, black boots, a lunch cooler, rope and a discarded chocolate chip granola bar wrapper. “It beats the hell out being in the office,” he says. When Dull finishes clearing the dam, he walks out of the chilly October water in boot-foot waders with a smile on his face. “Ain’t it pretty out here?” he asks, giggling. “This is a perfect job.” Dull’s work with the beaver dam is done. Now it’s time to trap. *** Hanging up on the wall of his garage, Earl Craven keeps a list of the 90-plus beavers he has trapped for Jim Dull. He documents each catch with a tally on the paper, a picture on his phone and a thumbtack of the location on his Barry County map. But being good at trapping comes with a price: The beavers are killed. It’s part of the reason Craven says he hesitated about doing the interview in the first place. He doesn’t want people to misunderstand. “I'm not an evil person, I don’t want to be perceived that way,” Craven explains. “I’m a man doing a job who is very blessed; who has much compassion for the animal, you know?” Craven started working with beavers within the last 10 years when a friend needed someone to clear a beaver dam in his backyard. But he had never trapped one before, even as kid in Nashville. The beavers didn’t go easy. They buried some of his traps and avoided others. It took six weeks to catch those two beavers – six weeks of going back and forth to the same dam every single day. Craven laughs when he thinks about his first assignment. He can’t believe how long it took him. But, when he finished the job, he knew he wanted to keep beaver trapping. “I couldn't wait for the next chance to do it,” he remembers. Word spread. His buddy told someone else who told someone else: Earl Craven traps beavers. In the meantime, Craven was learning more. He got his damage and nuisance control permit from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. He joined Facebook groups with beaver trappers. He made friends across the country, in Vermont, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. He watched YouTube videos. He “hit pay dirt” on a beaver-catching DVD that changed his whole outlook on the operation. He started a business, Easy E Trapping. Around 2019, Craven got the part-time job with the drain commission as its beaver trapper. When Dull clears the dams, it lures back the beavers, who want to rebuild their creation. Craven will then place a trap near the destroyed dam, baiting them one by one. He will check on the traps every day until seven days pass without finding a dead beaver. Sometimes it can take weeks of clearing the dams and trapping the beavers to fully clear an area. Even then, the beavers might come back and start all over again. Craven sets up a Bridger #5 trap in his garage in the city of Hastings. He won’t share all of his tricks. Some stuff is on the record, some stuff is off. But he’s willing to show that it works. He kneels down on the concrete floor and props up a rod. He chains a foothold trap to the rod so that it dangles down in the air. Normally, the trap would be hidden underwater, with a piece of the rod and pink tape sticking out from the top of the water. It’s a small trap, the size of a bowl, with a pedal-looking feature in the middle. But, when it snaps, it’s strong enough to break Craven’s finger. Craven must bait the beaver into stepping exactly on the pedal. Then the clasp will snap on its foot and the beaver will sink down the rod, into the water and drown. When Craven cannot see the pink tape anymore, he knows he has caught a beaver. He's still experimenting with his trapping methods. He's trying out a new rod and he even bought a trap that looks more like a rectangular dog-crate. With this trap, if he catches another animal, like an otter or a turtle, he can let them go without harming them. “I ain’t getting rich off this. I ain’t making a whole lot of money at all,” Craven says. “I do it because I enjoy it. I enjoy the trapping, the cat-and-mouse. It's an old tradition nobody does.” Killing beavers, though, has an effect on the ecosystem and it isn't inconsequential. Actually, it's quite the opposite. They’re considered a keystone species. “They're essential in creating these wetland spaces,” says Mary Parr, stewardship manager at Pierce Cedar Creek Institute. “And so that's kind of what makes them a keystone to that ecosystem. In their absence, you know, none of that would exist.” The beavers aren’t building the dams to be a nuisance or flood roads. Instead, Parr says, they’re “creating wetlands where there were no wetlands previously.” The beavers literally fly underwater, carrying logs the size of their body weight in their mouths, breathing through a second lip. They will fill all of the holes in the dam with wood before using mud to “plaster” the structure, Parr says. But Parr also calls them “big meatballs.” On land, they are vulnerable to predators. Under water, where they can use their webbed feet and hold their breathe for 15 minutes, they feel safe. In turn, they also create habitat for a number of animals, like waterfowl, muskrats, otters, minks, toads, frogs, salamanders and fish. It provides a place for ducks and geese to park overnight as they migrate. “In a time of climate change, when a lot of wetlands might not have existed as they did previously, those habitats are going to be essential for dispersal of species as they're moving north into the climate range that fits their suite of skills,” Parr says. But there’s a conflict. “They prefer the same regions that humans do," she says. That means flooded roads, yards, houses and drains. And that means Jim Dull gets a lot of phone calls from people in Barry County needing help. *** Some days, Dull estimates, he receives two phone calls. On other days, he’ll get 40. Either way, the phone calls don’t bother him. He always tries to answer his phone and, if he doesn’t, he will call back. “I got a pet peeve about that,” he says. “I don't like to call somebody not to get a response. So I try to call them within less than a day. … You're gonna call me, you probably got a reason that you want answered.” Dull gives everyone his cell phone number and he rarely takes a day off. His wife likes taking trips across the country, but not Dull. He doesn’t like leaving work and he doesn’t like leaving Barry County. “I’m just tickled to death to be here,” he said. When someone calls him, he wants to be able to call back and do something about it. “The more exposure we get, the more people will know what we're doing,” Dull says. “If they have beaver dams, they'll know enough to call us.” They’re not trapping beavers for fun, Dull emphasizes. They’re trapping because some beavers need to be trapped. “I don't care for trapping because I don't like to kill things,” he says. Craven calls it “management.” And he follows a strict code. He does everything he can to avoid having to kill a beaver. He will only take necessary jobs, he said, like when a road or home is flooded. “I don't get a call from the road commission because some guy’s got a beaver eating his tree,” he says. When it's beaver season, November through April 2022, Craven can skin or eat the beaver. If they’re going to die, he tries to get the most out of the animal. “I don't get no glory out of killing anything,” he says. “Much respect to them; I try to use anything I can off of it.” But there’s not much more the drain commission can do as far as dealing with beavers, Craven and Dull say. If a beaver is causing a safety hazard for humans, it has to go. Relocation of the beavers is not a good idea, Dull says. Beavers are territorial and, when they enter the haunts of another beaver, the result is often bloody and violent. Even if Craven does move the beavers, he’s just “relocating a problem,” Craven adds. Trapping is their best option. And that’s a testament to the beaver, Craven says – his favorite animal. “If they build that dam and you go tear it out, they will build it again tonight,” Craven says. “If you tear it out, they will build it again the next night. “You will not win.”

Amy Henney-Planck can’t seem to sleep these days. Sometimes she sits in bed at 2 a.m. and just stares at the ceiling. Sometimes she gets up at 6 a.m. opens her laptop and does research. But the one thing she doesn’t do much is sleep. Henney-Planck owns an in-home medical care business, A Moment in Time. She takes care of Jesus Arias, who was in a near-fatal car accident 30 years ago and needs 24/7 care. The problem is, Henney-Planck can no longer afford to continue caring for him. And without her support, it’s unclear what will happen to Arias. Before this summer, Michigan’s no-fault auto insurance law allowed people who suffered serious injuries in vehicle accidents to receive 100-percent reimbursement for their medical costs. That changed after July 1. In an effort to lower some of the highest auto insurance rates in the nation, the state Legislature slashed reimbursement rates by 45 percent. Reforms did lower car insurance rates for most people, but they also cut deeply into the profit margins for caregiving companies, like Henney-Planck. According to the Michigan Brain Injury Provider Council, nearly 700 people in the state have lost this kind of care and at least 1,529 health care providers have lost their jobs. “I lay in bed, and I just think – how much longer can I do this?” Henney-Planck said. “What are [Arias] and his family going to do if we have to pull out? “My brain just doesn’t shut down.” The life Jesus Arias lives Jesus Arias, 68, is wearing a blue, green and yellow patterned bib as he sits at a wooden dining room table. He looks out of the window where the trees line the backyard of his home in Hastings Charter Township. He can’t move much more than turn his head, blink his eyes and say a few words. So he waits patiently for his caregiver Joanna Eckhoff to bring bites of a turkey wrap and Ritz crackers to his mouth. There isn’t a lot of talking at the lunch table. The hourlong lunch periods are intentionally quiet. Arias has to chew small pieces of food and take his time eating to make sure the meal goes down the right path. He's what they call a silent aspirator. Any distraction could disrupt his digestion, sending food spiraling into his lungs. When his daughter left without saying goodbye, for example, Arias turned his head and tried to speak. But he hadn’t finished swallowing his food and erupted into a coughing fit that sent saliva running down his chin and Eckhoff reaching for a roll of paper towels. It was a long – but successful – morning of physical therapy for Jesse, as they affectionally call him. He stood up in his standing frame for 30 minutes – the most he has accomplished since his injury 30 years ago. It’s a cause for celebration and good thing the first activity after lunch is “Jesse’s Time.” Arias lives a regimented lifestyle with his daily schedule marked down to the hour. Wake up at 6:30 a.m. Physical therapy at 9 a.m. Lunch at noon and then “Jesse's Time” after, which could include picking a Western movie from his shelf full of CDs, playing poker or watching horses. He hopes one day to ride a horse, but, first, he needs to work on his core, Eckhoff says. Arias signals he is ready to watch one of his favorite TV shows, “Two and a Half Men,” by picking up his favorite hat – the one with the emblem of Mexico on the front -- from the dining room table. He brings it to his head, but can’t put it on. Eckhoff reaches over to help. Then they’re off, with Eckhoff pushing his wheelchair, to his two rooms in the back of the house, which is equipped with a hospital bed, floor space for his physical therapy equipment and a couch for his caregivers. In 1988, Arias and his mother were driving back to Michigan from his father’s funeral in Mexico. Fourteen hours from home, the car hit a patch of black ice on a bridge in Oklahoma City. The car spun out and catapulted backward into a telephone pole. As the pole came crashing down on the car, Arias threw his body over his mother, saving her life. But the pole smashed into his head. Arias spent the next two months in a coma. It was unclear whether he would live or die. He never fully recovered. For more than 25 years, he stayed at Spectrum Neuro and Rehabilitation facility. A staff of full-time nurses took care of him around the clock. His medical costs were covered by the state’s no-fault auto insurance law. Then, in 2016, Arias nearly died in the hospital. He was septic and developed pneumonia. His sodium levels reached dangerous levels and his urine turned black. His condition eventually improved, but his daughter, Julia Arias-Pease, wanted him home in Hastings, where she could see him and help take care of him. She reached out to Henney-Planck, who brought on nine caregivers for Arias. Everyone noticed an immediate improvement in her dad In the hospital facility, he was like a “medicated zombie,” his granddaughter Hayden Thompson said. But under the care of A Moment in Time, he started to hold short conversations. He went from being diabetic to losing 170 pounds. He switched from 30 medications a day to just two – a blood pressure pill and an allergy pill. “He has more personality than I’ve ever seen,” said Thompson, who grew up visiting him in the hospital. Everything was paid for – from the home health-care workers to her father’s van to the doctor’s appointments to the two-room addition built at their house to accommodate Arias. Michigan Brain Injury Provider Council Board President Tom Judd called it “the best system of care in the country for auto accident victims.” The costs of keeping Arias alive haven’t gone away. He has improved with full-time home care, although not enough to live on his own. Physically, Arias-Pease compares him to a toddler. “He can't do anything for himself but probably itch his eye,” Arias-Pease said. “... So you literally are doing everything.” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed the Michigan no-fault reform bills in May 2019, but Arias-Pease wasn’t worried. She thought her family would be grandfathered into the system. Two years later, the law went into effect and that was not the case. In-home care providers, including Henney-Planck, had their reimbursement rates cut from 100 percent to 55 percent. State Rep. Julie Calley, R-Portland, who voted for the bill, said that the Legislature assumed 55 percent would be enough to support caregivers. Although Calley said she was not involved in the “tough negotiations,” she heard from leadership on the issue that, at the time, they had not received enough “openness” from providers to find a more exact reimbursement rate. “We thought that percentage was sustainable for long-term care providers, otherwise we wouldn't have passed it,” Calley said. “So it continues to be the intent that those who are grandfathered in will be taken care of. But since it has been raised that that may not be an accurate or sufficient reimbursement rate, now we need to figure out a change.” 'Would our legislators take a 45-percent pay cut?' Henney-Planck has owned her in-home medical care business for four years. Before the law went into effect, her insurance company, AAA, paid for her to treat Arias. Her business was reimbursed at a rate of $24 an hour to provide the care. Then she would divvy up $19 to $20 an hour to pay her caregivers and cover the overhead, which includes her own insurance and other liability costs. It left her with about $4 to $5 an hour for herself. She never made a lot, but she stuck with it and had plans to request more money. Henney-Planck has 13 other clients, all of whom pay out of pocket. Arias was the only family who paid for his care out of the insurance coverage. Now, continuing to care for Arias is setting back her entire business, but she can’t bring herself to leave him and his family. “I’m having the hope and the faith that this is going to get worked out,” Henney-Planck said. “… I cannot just walk away from him because I know there is not another agency that’s going to come in and accept 55 percent. So I have done what I could do and made the adjustments that I needed to stay there for a short time before what I have is gone.” Since the changes in the no-fault auto insurance law, Henney-Planck’s company gets reimbursed at a rate of $13.69 an hour for each worker she sends to help Arias. That cumulative loss of $10.31 an hour is taking a toll in more ways than one. Every hour she devotes to the care of Arias represents a financial loss that her business is having to absorb. She has lost four of Arias’ caregivers and doesn’t know how much longer she can absorb so much of the cost of caring for him. The law created a “fee schedule” separating services that Medicare and non-Medicare payable codes could cover. That affected caregivers like Henney-Planck. For Medicare payable services, such as physical therapy, speech therapy, physicians and nurses, people can receive reimbursement up to 200 percent. But for non-Medicare payable services, such as in-home services and residential care, reimbursement rates were cut by 45 percent. “It's not reasonable to assume that companies could have withstood that type of reimbursement cuts,” Michigan Brain Injury Provider Council's Judd said, “so what you see is these care providers have no other option than to either close their doors completely … [or] they're discharging their auto-funded patients because they simply can't work at that rate.” And that’s if the providers are getting paid at all. Between July 2 and Aug. 18, Henney-Planck’s requests for reimbursements, even at the reduced rate, were flat-out denied by the insurance company, meaning she had no money coming in from the insurance companies to cover Arias’ care. She made countless phone calls to her insurance company, the Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association and the Department of Insurance and Financial Services (DIFS), but it took more than a month to begin receiving payments again. Henney-Planck is not alone. Since the passage of the reform, Judd said he has heard of multiple instances where providers were not being paid. “The insurance companies have a lot of tools in their tool belt to deny and delay claims,” he said. “...It seems like a coordinated effort to kind of wait providers out and chill the post-acute continuum of care. Wait these providers out, they're not going to be able to stay in business and insurance companies and the [MCCA] are going to be off the hook for lifetime care.” People having trouble with the new insurance rates are encouraged to work out the issues with their insurance companies first, DIFS Director Anita Fox said. If that doesn’t work out, they can file a complaint with DIFS, the state agency that helps to regulate insurance companies. Fox said DIFS is like a “facilitator,” working between the service providers and the insurance companies. Since the law passed in early July, Fox said they have received about 60 complaints related to reimbursement rates. As of Sept. 10, a little more than half of those complaints had been resolved. “By resolved, I mean that there's a medically appropriate care plan in place that meets the family's needs and complies with the policy and the law,” she said. “Again, it may not be exactly what the family wanted.” In recent weeks, Henney-Planck's financial situation has improved slightly. She has started receiving checks from AAA, even though they have come in at the reduced rate. Arias-Pease's cousin set up a taco stand during the 28th Street Metro Cruise in Grand Rapids and contributed $1,700 to the $4,053 the Arias family has raised for Henney-Planck in a GoFundMe account. Still, Henney-Planck gives herself two months before she can no longer afford to treat Arias. She’s frustrated, confused and sleep-deprived. “Would our legislators, would all these insurance agents, would they take a 45-percent pay cut? Absolutely not,” Henney-Planck said. “But yet, I'm supposed to take a 45-percent pay cut?” If Henney-Planck can no longer afford to treat Arias, that means his daughter, Arias-Pease, would have to take care of her father 24/7. Arias-Pease, who has owned and run Creative Designs on State Street for 14 years, said she would have to close her business. And, if that happens, she gives her family only a month and half until their funds will run out. “We do nothing but cry,” Arias-Pease said, “nothing but cry.” Cleaning up the mess After people in Michigan lost their coverage, the state earmarked $25 million through the Licensing and Regulation Authority to compensate providers for their loss in reimbursement. Arias-Pease and Henney-Planck said they had trouble finding the form to become eligible for the additional support. They obtained the form only after Calley’s legislative aide emailed it to them. When they did receive the form, however, it was difficult to understand. The process requires providers to show how much money they requested, how much they received and documents that prove they cannot sustain their business on the amount they were given. But for people who haven’t received payments at all, they can’t even apply in the first place. When they do apply, the review process takes 21 days and another seven days after approval for payment – pushing up against the deadline Henney-Planck and Arias-Pease have set for themselves. At first, Henney-Planck tried filling out the form on her own, but got stuck after it wouldn't register her company. She contacted Calley's office and they connected her with someone from DIFS to walk her through the application. On Friday, Aug. 27, the Arias family showed up at Calley’s office hours at the Tyden Center. They told Calley their story and asked for her help. “People aren’t aware of what these other people are living and experiencing – and the hell they’re going through unless they are living it,” Henney-Planck said after the office hours. “And that's what we need to do – get it out there and make more people aware of it.” During the meeting, Calley recognized that the Legislature had overlooked the providers who had their pay cut by the reform. She pointed to the $25 million as a way to tide people over until they find a better solution. Calley said they will use the $25 million to “collect data.” Once that $25 million is given out, the Legislature will receive a report with the data from DIFS to inform the next steps. “When you enact large reforms like this, it’s not unusual to find that you need to make some changes thereafter,” Calley said. “We’re willing to do that; we just need to make sure that we're doing it the right way.” Calley did, however, maintain that parts of the new law have worked. The reforms have addressed fraud and waste abuse in the auto insurance industry, she said, one of her main concerns. “We were the last state to have this unlimited option out there without any sort of ways to rein in the expenses that insurance companies would then have to turn around and pay,” she said. Before the changes, car owners were required to choose unlimited coverage for Personal Injury Protection, which raised auto insurance rates across the state and discouraged some from buying insurance altogether. Now, people have the option to choose their coverage and Calley said she has received mostly positive feedback from her constituents. As a result of the reforms, Fox said rates have gone down across the state and at least 50,000 previously uninsured drivers have obtained auto insurance. Calley said she has heard of at least 26 new auto insurance agencies opening in Michigan. Plus, Calley added, there are consumer protections that disallow auto insurers from using factors such as marital status, gender, occupation and credit score to determine someone’s rate. But for Arias and his family, those details are superfluous. Without this financial support, his life is on the line. He's not in any condition to fight for it and that's the point. Fortunately for him, his family and care providers are fighting for him and they're asking the state Legislature to fix the reform. The time they have is running out. “It does need to happen now,” Arias-Pease said. “We can't wait.”

Hastings Public Library has an unusual life story. It can trace its origins back to the Hastings Women’s Club. It likely moved around in a few homes on or near Green Street in its youth before settling in above the old Banner….. office in its late teens. There it lingered for a bit before moseying over one block and finding a suitable room within the old city hall. Maturing into its 20s, but still in need of a home, it was taken in, adopted, by Hastings High School in 1918. The school was brand new and the city and school administration agreed to share custody. It grew and expanded with age, moving twice within the high school before cutting ties at 70 and setting out on its own as a public library in a former post office. There, too, it continued to grow, struggling to adapt after new technology began to emerge as the library neared the century mark. Where a coal cellar and fallout shelter had once had a place and purpose, micro-computers and the World Wide Web were moving in like young, uninvited guests. The thick walls and secure features of the old structure were not readily compatible with modems, cables and wiring. But the library wasn’t about to give in. Instead, it found a new home, equipped for patrons of all ages, and, like a kindly old grandpa, opened its arms to the community. After all, the community had long supported the library, which will mark 125 years at a special celebration Aug. 7. (See related story.) Origins with women’s club The Hastings Women’s Club had its first meeting in the parlor of the Green Street home of Emma Goodyear in October 1893. The members established some rules and some goals: The club would focus on both culture and service. Membership would be limited to 40 women from all areas and all denominations within the city. A library was among the early goals. Soon, members began to set aside money to go toward the purchase of books. After two years, they had raised $75 and placed an order. Mary Spencer, the state librarian, sent a box of books – some classics, a few travel books and some of the latest novels. Some books were donated by the community, as well. A bookcase was needed – and was promptly procured, establishing the first library in the city in 1896. Initially, though, it was limited to members of the women’s club, who were allowed to borrow books on alternate Fridays. While still under the proprietorship of the women’s club, by 1906, the expanded collection was set up in a room above the Banner ……office. The room was known as the Manufacturer’s Club, above what is now Seasonal Grille at the corner of State and Church streets. The next move for the growing collection was a room at the old city hall, at the corner of State and Broadway. As plans were being drawn up for a new high school in 1916 or 1917, school and city leaders decided to incorporate a library within the new building. Plans were completed, bricks were laid, and the women’s club voted to donate its collection – by then 500 books – to the enterprise. That iteration of the library was on an upper level in the original, east portion of the former high school, until 1955. According to a Nov. 21, 1996, Banner…… article by the late Joyce Weinbrecht, branch libraries were established in the ward schools within the school district. The hush, the stairs, the book Jane Arnold has special memories of that library on the east side of the school. She attended Central Elementary. Despite the close proximity, elementary students at that time didn’t visit the library as a group; it wasn’t big enough, she said. But she visited frequently on her own. “If you went in the front door there on the east end, you had to go up a whole bunch of stairs – that's all you could do if you stepped in the front door,” she recalled. It was basically one-room library, she said, the size of a large classroom, with children's books on one side and the adult books on the other. And in her random collection of childhood memories, she can picture a counter and, behind that, an off-limits area with lots of books. “Of course, I never got to go back there,” the former Jane Whitmore said. “I just remember there were stacks of books, and you had to ask a librarian to get those books back there. I don't know if they reference books there or whatever.” She was much more familiar with the children’s area. Getting to the shelves of children’s literature, though, could be intimidating. “I walked back and forth to school, and I would go over [to the library] maybe after school by myself,” she said, “and I’d go in and see all those stairs. And then I would hear these high schoolers up at the top of the stairs because they were in the rest of the building, and I was a little bit intimidated. But I’d get to the top of stairs and just quickly turn left to go in the library.” A very quiet library. “I do remember you could not talk. They would speak to you, if you talked. I remember that,” she said, adding that the librarian was Jean Barnes, who was “how you’d picture a librarian.” Arnold also remembers repeatedly checking out a particular book: “Madeleine.” “I don't know how many times I would check it out,” she said. “I loved that book, and I would check it out bring it home, and then I’d take it back later.” The library was moved to the lower level when the west addition, including a new gym, was added in 1955. When the library was moved to the former post office, that space was converted into administrative offices for the school district. Restlessness and parting of ways Miss Jean Barnes, a native of Hastings who held degrees from both the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan, was the first librarian, hired in 1921. She had returned to Hastings to care for her mother before the new position opened. She was well-qualified, the obvious choice, and would serve in that role for 31 years, retiring in 1952. Within the 10 years after Barnes retired, four different people served as the librarian, one of them, Henry C. French, taking the job twice and departing twice. George Early moved from New York State to fill the position in August 1958, but left after eight months to assume leadership at a library in Illinois that was not affiliated with a school system. In early 1963, Weinbrecht noted in her 1996 column, school maintenance staff made study booths thickly padded with acoustic tile. Students appreciated the privacy and reduced distraction the booths provided. Students, it seems, weren’t the only ones looking for separation. The idea of removing the public library from the school was growing with persistence, Weinbrecht wrote. She’d found an undated report given to the Hastings City Council, likely from the early 1960s. “The practice of uniting the facilities of public and school libraries was a popular one a number of years ago,” the report read. “A great many cities, large and small, were attracted to the obvious money savings involved. The money was saved, but the experience in all cases proved unsatisfactory. “The unfortunate truth of the matter is that such libraries became, over a period of time, more and more devoted to the needs of the school. Service to the general public must be maintained, but that public will not take full advantage of service under such circumstances. … Most communities have abandoned the combined libraries system because of the poor experience. “… The presence of 30 or 40 children in the library makes a difficult atmosphere for most adults, and the 5 percent use [among the adult population] in Hastings seems to substantiate this feeling.” The desire to part ways was not new. In 1950, a donor had given $100 toward a public library, hoping to rally the library card-carrying troops. In September 1951, the Banner ……. reported that the city council had accepted a gift of property at the corner of South Broadway and Center Street to be used for a public library. Paul Siegel, the city’s attorney, told the council that groups and individuals had raised money to purchase the property and to pay for it to be remodeled to serve as a library. Over the years, the library has been situated near one corner or another, but this, ultimately, was not one of its home corners. But the effort showed earnestness among the public. The article noted that the city had paid $5,200 toward the upkeep of the library the previous year, a little over half of the expenses. Alderman Lannes Kenfield, who also served on the library board, said that money could go toward a public library that could be open “at times more convenient to the public than the present institution.” Arloa Lathrop, widow of Dr. Clarence Lathrop, left money specifically for both Pennock Hospital and a new public library in 1954. That $15,000 donation toward a library was invested in bonds, and according to a Dec. 23, 1954, Banner ……. article, “at the end of 12 years, will be worth $21,025.” The feds get involved It took about 12 years before the library would move from the high school to the corner of Church and Court streets. Those were 12 busy years – with interest. The library was not just relocating, it was becoming a completely new entity. Although some books would be transferred from the high school, Hastings Public Library was still just an idea and had little in the way of possessions. The U.S. government moved the Hastings Post Office from Church to West Mill Street in 1963. The sturdy brick building seemed an ideal structure for a public library. The corner lot across from the stately courthouse was ideal. And it was vacant. The federal government agreed to lease the building to the city for $1 a year. Contracts were signed, remodeling plans sketched out, committees formed, campaigns launched, and donations for books and remodeling trickled in. The roof was replaced. The coal heating system was converted to gas. Oak tables and chairs were chosen, along with carpeting and floor covering. A Dec. 31, 1964, Banner …… article reported that at least an hour was needed to process, catalog and cross-reference each book. More than 50 people helped with the process, and their work totaled about 9,000 hours. Starting in July 1964, the school library was no longer accessible to the public. Finally, in mid-January 1965, the new city-owned public library was opened. The outdoor ceremony was brief because the air was brisk, hovering around zero degrees. The new library became an integral part of the city, drawing in patrons from throughout the county, hosting clubs and meetings, squeezing in 100 or more children for summer reading programs, adapting with technology, converting the old loading dock from the post office days into a youth literature area with a back entrance, moving the circulation desk, reconfiguring and rearranging – until it couldn’t shift anymore. Talk of a new library began. A district library was proposed, but that failed. Three specific sites, including the former Royal Coach building, were considered. Extensive research and site developments were studied before the library board was able to settle on the corner of State and Apple/Boltwood streets. Feeling lost Shortly after getting married, Larry and Judy Kensington joined a literary guild on the east side of the state. However, they soon realized that neither liked to read a book more than once, and they’d spent $200 or $300 on books they wouldn’t read again. Judy Kensington had been a library patron since she was 5, when her mother would take her to pick out books once a week. So, the young couple turned to the nearby Mount Clemens library. Because they didn’t reside within the city limits, they paid $100 a year for membership – still much less than purchasing new books. By the time the Kensingtons moved to Hastings around Thanksgiving 1983, Mount Clemens “had a state-of-the-art brand-new city library,” she said. The Hastings library had become a bit overloaded, and it was a letdown for Kensington when she first visited. “I just shook my head. ‘This isn’t going to work.’ The back porch [former loading dock] had turntables, and they were loaded with old paperbacks, not in order,” she said. “There was virtually a place for new books. I felt lost.” She began making weekly trips to a Kent County library to check out books for herself and her family. She eventually returned to the Hastings library after Barbara Schondelmayer was hired as head librarian, who provided better organization and started the campaign to build a new library. Kensington retired as a teller at Hastings City Bank in late December 1999 and immediately took on a new position. The library and bank were directly across from each other at the time. “I walked across the street the day after New Year’s 2000, and said, ‘I would like to volunteer.’ New corner location Initially, Kensington re-shelved children’s books every Tuesday and Friday. Now, she’s president of the Friends of Hastings Public Library group, volunteers wherever needed, is in charge of the shelvers and helps train others in that essential task. “If you put a book away wrong, it’s lost until somebody finds it,” she said simply. Kensington herself hasn’t felt lost since the new library opened in 2007. And she’s proud of the facility, too. “I think we have a wonderful library now. It’s warm, it’s friendly, and it’s the center of the city,” she said. “When new people move here, part of the reason they move here is because of the library.” She can quickly think of people who based their decision to move to Hastings mostly on the library. Hastings isn’t unique in that regard, though. She recalled a couple who were guest speakers a few years ago for Calvin University’s January Series, which is livestreamed at the Hastings library. The couple had traveled the country and written a book about small towns. “The small towns that are the most successful were the towns that had a thriving library,” she said, conveying the author-couple’s conclusion. “People look at schools and look at libraries, and now they look at the Thornapple Plaza ....” “And the fact that we built [the current library] with private funds says the whole community was behind having a new building,” she added. Still, she sometimes encounters people who haven’t visited the “new,” now 14-year-old, library. And that baffles her. She’s so familiar with the library now, she can easily list all sorts of services, items, and activities it provides. If nothing else, people should go to the library and see all the thriving things they have, she pointed out. As for the future of the library, Kensington said she sees it keeping up with technology. Back in the 1960s, when she and her late husband were in the literary guild, most people had wall phones. “And, if you were lucky, you had a 20-foot cord, so you could walk around the corner with it,” she said. Now, with smartphones, people can walk around any corner within the library and check out materials on their phones. She expects the library to keep up with technology. “They already have the latest things available,” she said of the Hastings library, adding that she’s looking forward to seeing the advances. Good move Jane Arnold describes the current building as a big asset to the city, noting that it took several years and a lot of effort by many people for the new library to be realized. About $6 million was raised, which was a decade-long struggle until the Barry Community Foundation and a generous anonymous donor stepped in to make the dream a reality. “It took a long time … people had to work really hard to get the money raised,” she said. “I don't remember all the people who worked so hard at it, but it was a good move. “It was a long time coming,” Arnold added. She and many others benefit from the larger facility and its ever-expanding offerings. “Our library today, I think it speaks well of Hastings. It has a lot to offer,” she said, pointing out the designated teens' and children’s sections, the community room, the numerous services and variety of materials. “I think they make it very easy for people to access, and they do other things to broaden people’s knowledge,” she said. “We thoroughly enjoyed the January Series livestream. “There are lots and lots of records down there, probably more than I realize,” she added. “Lots of research can be done down there if people are interested in history and so forth. So, yeah, I think it speaks very well of Hastings.”