This is the second part of a three-part series. Part One | Part Three
Linda Ady is the librarian in Pelican. She’s among those working multiple jobs to continue living in Pelican. (KCAW photo by Ed Ronco)
Like most of the buildings in Pelican, the public library sits on stilts over the water, along the half-mile boardwalk that is this city’s main drag. Inside, Linda Ady greets patrons from her seat at the librarian’s desk. A man walks in and signs a piece of paper to use one of the internet terminals while Ady eats an apple and organizes the cards that show who’s borrowed what. Ady has worked here since 2008.
“The cold storage closed its doors,” she says. “I lost my job, and I’m doing two part-time jobs just to keep my house.”
She says this job just happened to be available when she needed it. But it seems like a good match. Ady says she loves everything about books, especially the smell of a brand new one.
“I’ve always dreamed of having a library in my own house — with shelves floor-to-ceiling and all covered in a nice easy chair and a big table,” she said. “And I have boxes and boxes of books, I’m just waiting for a library. I just need to build it.”
But it was this library — the public one — that served as her hangout when she was growing up in Pelican in the 1970s. It’s been the hangout for a few more kids since then. As record of that, green pieces of tape stuck all over the side of one book case.
“That’s for all the kids in town, and their heights as they grow up, from the little kids,” she said. “They would come in and move their heights as they grow up. There’s probably, what, 30 maybe? 35?”
About half of them are still here, she says, and that’s not too bad, considering that Pelican’s economy doesn’t make day-to-day life easy. One of the few services in town is Ady’s other part-time job: delivering freight that comes in on sea planes. A lot of that freight is food. Pelican has been without a grocery store since the cold storage closed.
“There used to be two bars, now there’s one, because if there’s no main employer like the cold storage going, there are no extra workers, there are no young families with kids,” she says.
The Pelican School District had 12 students in the last school year. Nine in middle and high school, and three in the elementary. The sun is out on this May afternoon as the elementary school students (two fourth graders and a first grader) work on a garden.
Connie Newman is their teacher and the school superintendent. She’s hoping people, in addition to plants, will put down roots here. But getting people to stay has been increasingly difficult. Once upon a time this district operated out of four buildings, with about 60 students about 10 or 20 years ago, Newman says. And now, with a dozen students, the district is dangerously close to a cutoff point. If enrollment sinks below 10, the state reduces funding to the district year-by-year, until there’s no state money left.
“Then the city of Pelican would have to pick that up if they so chose,” Newman says.
There were no seniors this last year, but there are three next year, which means, unless new students enroll, the district will drop to nine students once those seniors graduate. Newman says her staff is preparing for that. The district’s maintenance man will not return to work next year, and the school district now housed in two buildings, will consolidate into one. The elementary school will move into the high school’s old home economics classroom. Newman says even she and her husband, Jim, have considered leaving town, but find themselves too invested in this community — financially, sure, but also emotionally.
“Jim and I own a home, and so we are committed to the town and the community and the kids,” she says. “The kids are very sweet. I don’t think you can find sweeter kids.” And the job is fun. “Well, most of the time,” she adds with a laugh.
Newman is concerned about the future. But she also says there’s much to be thankful for here, whether it’s the mountains just across the inlet that soar out of the water, or the kids who get excited about gardening in the school’s front yard. Newman says that’s part of why she stays. That, and because she believes – as so many here do – that Pelican’s future is bright.
This story is part two of a three-part series.
