5 October 2023
DULUTH When Leona Gifford started volunteering at the old St. Louis County Jail in downtown Duluth, there was a box of books collecting dust in the corner of a small office.
Today, the Haines Road facility has an entire library filled with shelves containing hundreds of titles from every genre, and a partnership with the Duluth Public Library ensures inmates have access to new material on at least a monthly basis.
A lifelong librarian, Gifford realized the importance of literature in enriching lives and allowing people to better themselves especially those down in life, said her family and jail staff.
“Leona was much more than just a volunteer,” said Tamara Lemke, the jail’s program facilitator. “Somebody should write a book about Leona because she was so well-traveled and so well-versed on just about anything that you would want to talk about. And she really had that quality of care and love for humanity and for the inmates.”
Gifford died in 2002, but her efforts to build and sustain the jail library program will not soon be forgotten. The facility on Tuesday was formally renamed “The Leona A. Gifford Library.”
“This was her passion,” niece Mary Ann Harala said at the dedication ceremony. “She would have moved in up here if she could’ve.”
Gifford, born in 1909 and raised on the Iron Range, helped establish the Gilbert Public Library during the Great Depression. She went on to join the Red Cross as a librarian in World War II, meeting her husband in the Philippines.
The couple settled in Boston, where Gifford was a longtime assistant head librarian at the Brookline Public Library. But after her retirement and her husband’s death, she returned to the Northland in the mid-1980s to be closer to her niece and other family.
A prolific donor and volunteer for various causes, Harala said her aunt used to ask her: “Who do you think needs a boost today?”
Gifford quickly earned a reputation at the jail as “the Library Lady.” Staff said she started sifting through the old books being discarded from the Duluth library, weeding out damaged and outdated titles and bringing the rest to the jail.
She spent countless hours reading and writing poetry with inmates. She would take requests to check out from the public library, and eventually donated her own money to set up a trust fund to pay for damaged and lost books.
The library today includes just about everything: popular fiction, westerns, science fiction, mystery, romance, cultural material, nonfiction, inspirational, self-help and religious titles. In addition to recreational reading, the library offers books intended to help inmates with education, self-care, stress, anger, co-dependency and substance use.
“The library at St. Louis County Jail would not be what it is today without Leona’s love and passion for education and humanity,” Lemke said.
Gifford additionally supported many educational programs, granted scholarships and purchased updated encyclopedias for local schools. In 1995, she granted an endowment to the Gilbert library so it could purchase computers and provide internet.
“Her claim to fame has always been that she was a librarian from candlelight to satellite,” Harala said.
Jail Administrator Jessica Pete said she found pamphlets from 1995, when the new jail opened, indicating the library was to be dedicated to Gifford. But signage was never put up and it was seemingly forgotten.
An encounter at the jail earlier this year changed that. Annie Harala, Mary Ann’s daughter and Gifford’s great-niece, had recently been elected to the County Board and was touring the facility to familiarize herself with county operations. She was excited to see the library her relative had helped design, and longtime staff members were excited to realize Gifford still had family in the area.
“It was a very emotional connection,” Lemke said. “I think we both got teary-eyed.”
Annie Harala described it as a “full circle” moment in which she realized the true impact of Gifford’s work.
“We had this instant connection over this woman who died 21 years ago this November,” she said. “When you’ve done something like that and you’ve built a legacy where you’re changing lives, that’s what’s most important.”
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