Our first speaker of this school year was Dr. Dan Turner, Head of Programming and Outreach at the Georgetown County Library. Dr. Turner has been working at the Georgetown Library for five years now, and has put together many different programs for the library. The library is currently closed for renovations, so he and his colleague Trudy Bazemore have been using the Es’Dorn Room at our school for their office. “It’s the nicest place we’ve ever worked!” he laughed.

Before working at the library, Dr. Turner taught literature and writing for 20 years at USC, Vanderbilt, Siena College, and Coastal Carolina. Turner was born “up north” in Spartanburg, and has a lifelong love for reading and writing which he enjoys sharing with others. One of his favorite writers is William Shakespeare but his area of concentration is American Southern Gothic literature. He urged the students who love writing to keep writing every day and not put up obstacles. “You’ve got to get it going to keep it going,” he said. “You don’t want to stand in your own way.”

The library renovations are a massive project, made possible by a bequest from Mrs. Jean Flournoy Moody, who left $1,000,000 to support the library upon her death. A team that included Dr. Turner first had to remove 80,000 books and place them into storage before the construction workers even arrived. “Our library was in need of some love,” Dr. Turner told us.

Besides adding much needed space to the library, the renovations to the library will transform the public space into something much more than a place to quietly do homework and read books, but will feature a filmmaking space with video editing software and production equipment. None of this would have been possible without the diligent work of the library’s dedicated staff members. Dr. Turner invited us to volunteer to help reshelve those 80,000 volumes when the library reopens in the spring! Our relationship with the Georgetown Library benefits our students in countless ways, and we would like to thank Dr. Dan Turner for being our first guest speaker of the school year!

By Larson