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Outgoing Blanchard Community Library Trustees Ed Geis and Ninette Reyes-Sena were lauded for their service by fellow board members, employees, and volunteers. |
BCL: Board, employees bid adieu to retiring Trustees Geis, Reyes-Sena
December 26, 2012
By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula News
Two longtime Blanchard Community Library Trustees were bid adieu December 18, but promised they’d be available when needed.
Both Ed Geis and Ninette Reyes-Sena declined to run again for the Library Board of Trustees and they were replaced by newcomers Maureen Coughlin and Linda Spink; incumbent Beverly Mueller was again reelected to the board in the November 6 Election.
Geis and Reyes-Sena were recognized for their service at the installation meeting held at the library. They were presented with plaques that note: “They who save a library save more than a building: they enrich the present and save the future and the past.”
Librarian Dan Robles said the appreciation for all Geis and Reyes-Sena have done for the library - from backing up the security company when the building alarm went off at 3 a.m. to promoting library usage in schools - was never expressed enough. Robles thanked Geis and Reyes-Sena for their dedication on behalf of himself, library staff, Friends of the Library and the community.
Library volunteer Cathy Sorenson presented the two with elaborate succulent plants, noting volunteers and the staff “really appreciate what you have done for us.”
Reyes-Sena, who began library board service as a trustee in 2001, said her childhood experiences with the library steered her to a career. “If it wasn’t for Mrs. (Maureen) Spencer,” Reyes-Sena said she would not have first become a teacher and then later a school principal. “She was an inspiration,” Reyes-Sena said of Spencer, who before her retirement served for decades as the library’s children’s librarian.
Geis, a library trustee since 2004, said serving the library “was an honor” and he greatly enjoyed working with the other members of the board as well as library staff and Robles. Blanchard Community Library is “a wonderful institution,” well appreciated by the community, said Geis, as “the parking lot is always full.”
