THE FOUNDATION'S PROJECT HONORING WALKER PERCY MAKING THE NEWS
The Foundation's dinner on March 7, featuring Jay Dardenne, to launch our project to celebrate the legacy of Walker Percy is in the news! Two local radio commentators on WGSO, Jeff Crouere and Maureen O'Brien, interviewed Argiro Morgan, the Foundation's President, about the event as well as the history of the Foundation.
The dinner also made the front page of the Times Picayune's Mandeville section on February 27th. The T-P article "Foundation to Launch Projects Honoring Walker Percy" detailed plans to sell etched pavers for the Walker Percy Serenity Circle patio and the Walker Percy Reading Room containing a books by Percy and the innumerable books written on his life and literary legacy. Pavers for the path leading to the Library will also be sold. The dinner was also featured in the St. Tammany News on Friday, February 22 in an article written by Debbie Glover.
Some members of the Percy family also have made plans to attend the event. Seats are filling fast as Keith Young's Steak House has limited seating. Young's is known for its delicious food. Diners have a choice of either steak or fish.
To attend the evening, which promises to be long remembered,
CLICK HERE TO PAY WITH PAYPAL ONLINE
OR send a $ 50.00 check to the Secretary of the Foundation - Ann Shaw - at 404 Twin River Drive, Covington, LA 70433. Checks should be made out to the St. Tammany Library Foundation.
CLICK HERE TO PAY WITH PAYPAL ONLINE
OR send a $ 50.00 check to the Secretary of the Foundation - Ann Shaw - at 404 Twin River Drive, Covington, LA 70433. Checks should be made out to the St. Tammany Library Foundation.
For more information, contact Ann at 985-373-3501 or Argiro at 985 845 87827.
We hope to see you at this historic event!
ST. TAMMANY LIBRARY FOUNDATION MARCH 7, 2013 EVENT
The St.Tammany Library Foundation will host an exciting event on March 7 at Keith Young's Steak House in Madisonville.
Louisiana's Lt. Governor, Jay Dardenne, is the featured speaker and promises a captivating story. Rebecca Hamilton, Louisiana's State Library Director, will attend. The Foundation will disclose its plans for a very special project honoring St.Tammany's acclaimed author, Walker Percy. Some of Percy's family will attend as well as friends of Percy.
Don't miss this event in Madisonville at 6:30 PM. It promises to be a sell out. Be sure to reserve your place early. Seats are definitely limited.
Two radio spots are also coming up on the event. Tune in Monday morning at 10:30 am at Jeff Crouere's Ringside Politics With a Punch radio show on WGSO, Radio 990. Councilwoman Maureen O'Brien will cover the event on the MO Show on WGSO also. Stay tuned for a date and time!
There was a well-written and informative article. written by Andy Canulette in the Times Picayune on-line edition on February 20, 2012. Worth reading. Go to NOLA! Here is an excerpt from Andy's story.
St. Tammany Library Foundation to launch
projects
honoring Walker Percy
The St. Tammany Library Foundation will
hold a dinner March 7 at Keith Young’s Steakhouse in Madisonville. Guest
speaker at the dinner will be Louisiana Lt. Governor Jay Dardenne, who is known
for his storytelling prowess and dramatic re-enactments of important events in
Louisiana history. As Lt. Governor, one of Dardenne’s duties is to oversee the
State Library of Louisiana. The dinner will launch the Foundation's drive to sell etched paving stones for the pathway to the library, honoring contributors by placing their names or the names of their loved ones in a historic marker.
But perhaps most importantly, it will be used as a chance to raise awareness of the foundation’s desire to start several projects that would honor National Book Award winning author Walker Percy.
Percy, who lived in Covington for many years until his
death in 1990, is a world-renowned author but is not properly recognized in St.
Tammany Parish, said St. Tammany Library Foundation President Argiro Morgan.
The foundation’s idea, she said, is to create a Walker
Percy Serenity Circle on the patio of the library. A reading room also would be
dedicated to Percy and would include a collection of his works, as well as the
books written on his life and literary legacy.“We have nothing right now but a plaque at the Covington
Library honoring him,” Morgan said. “If you Google him, you’ll see there is a
festival in Ireland dedicated to him. (The University of) North Carolina has
all his papers. Loyola (University of New Orleans) has a writing center named
for him. We need to do more. It’s only fitting because he spent so much of his
life here.”
Percy wrote six novels, beginning in 1961 with “The
Moviegoer,” which won the National Book Award for Fiction. Two non-fiction
collections of his essays also were published during his lifetime, as were
numerous books on his life, writings and philosophies. Among his many honors,
in 1989 Percy was awarded the Laetare Medal from the University of Notre Dame,
which is bestowed each year “to a Catholic whose genius has ennobled the arts
and sciences, illustrated the ideals of the Church and enriched the heritage of
humanity.” The same year, the National Endowment for the Humanities chose him
to deliver the Jefferson Lecture.
Morgan eagerly awaits the time when today’s generations
can sit in the Walker Percy Reading Room to ponder the author’s words.
"We want there to be plenty of space, a comfortable
place where people can sit and read and think," said Argiro Morgan of
plans to honor Walker Percy.
“We want to work with some of the other places who have
honored him,” she said. “We want there to be plenty of space, a comfortable
place, where people can sit and read and think.”
Cost to attend the dinner, which begins at 7 p.m., is
$50, including the meal. Additional proceeds will benefit the St. Tammany
Library Foundation.
Commemorative bricks leading into the library are being
sold for $50 each. Pavers to be set in the Walker Percy Serenity Circle will
cost more, though a definite figure has not been determined.
Morgan said she hopes the structure of the library
building will be complete by April, at which time, work on the interior would
begin. The library is being built in the heart of old Madisonville, near the
Lake Pontchartrain Basin Maritime Museum.
For more information on the library foundation’s dinner
or to purchase a brick, send email to Morgan at argiro@bellsouth.net or to Ann
Shaw at shaw6017@bellsouth.net. To find out more about the St. Tammany Library
Foundation, go online to www.sttammanylibraryfoundation.org.