Posted on

November 19, 2025: Bob Willey

Dr. Robert J. Willey was our guest today. Bob and his wife Carol have been retired in Georgetown for 11 years. They moved here from Massachusetts where he worked as professor and dean at Springfield College. After teaching philosophy and history for 42 years, he decided he wanted to do something different. He decided to help out the citizens of Georgetown in a special way by becoming a friend of our library here.  The Georgetown Friends of the Library funds the free programs at the public library such as children’s reading group programs, adult arts and crafts, and many more free activities for the patrons. Bob was determined to get the Friends’ group going and he has succeeded!

Bob is very interested in Black history and in particular the story of abolitionist Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave who worked to help other slaves find their freedom on the “Underground Railroad.” Bob and the FOGL were responsible for finding funds to bring Wesley Wofford’s Harriet Tubman: The Journey to Freedom sculpture Georgetown two years ago. The statue was on display at Lafayette Park where we as a school were able to walk down and visit it.

Bob explained that Harriet Tubman saved her own family from being separated. Her grandnephew James Bowley ended up becoming a great free black man. “He was appointed to run Georgetown’s freedmen’s bureau,” Bob told us, “and he served in the Union Navy.”

Bob told us that the FOGL is working on an exciting new project. They commissioned a small statue from Wesley Wofford to be called Whispers of My Ancestor. It will show Harriet Tubman encouraging the young James Bowley to aspire to great things. The statue will be near the children’s section where anyone can go over and touch it and be inspired. The FOGL has already raised the $40,000 necessary to make the statue a reality.

Best of luck to the Friends of the Library and their awesome leader Bob Willey!

By Larson

Posted on

August 30, 2023: Dan Cross Turner

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