Library aid, it all began with a boy and his book (Jeff Atwater) (PBP) 5-1-10r,
6A THE PALM BEACH POST • SATURDAY, MAY 17 2010
Library aid: It all began with a boy and his book
By DARA KAM
Palm Beach Post Capital Bureau
TALLAHASSEE — This
is the tale of a book about
Johnny Unitas and a little
boy on a bicycle who grew
up to be the president of
the Florida Senate.
And how that might
have had a little to do with
the Senate pushing the
House so hard for money
for the state's libraries in
the 2010-11 budget.
Once upon a time,
when Senate President
Jeff Atwater, now 52,
was about 8 years old,
his mother, Pat Hardee
Atwater, started a vol-
unteer library in North
Palm Beach. Jeff rode
his bicycle to that library
every day.
One day, he and his
father watched Baltimore
Colts football legend
Johnny Unitas play on
television, so he checked
out The Johnny Unitas Story
from Nancy Moore, the
librarian.
He kept it for a week,
rode his bike back to the
library and checked it out
again. And again — for a
year.
But when he was about
9, to his dismay, the book
was gone.
"I was going up and
down the space on that
shelf. There weren't many
shelves because it was
a small library. And the
book wasn't there," Atwa-
ter said.
Mrs. Moore told
the
Johnny Unitas
■E
him someone else had
checked it out and sug-
gested he read "some-
thing about the founding
story
N 111190z'
Senate President
f Jeff Atwater
` loved reading
The Johnny
Unitas Story
when he was a
boy. The copy
he checked out
—.., repeatedly now
sits on a shelf in
his office.
fathers," recalled Atwater,
now a history buff.
"I'm not interested
in the founding fathers.
I'm interested in Johnny
Unitas," he said. But he
reluctantly accepted a
replacement.
Ten years later, on a va-
cation break from college,
Atwater was in the library
studying and decided to
check whether his child-
hood favorite was there.
It was, and the check-
out
heckout card was still inside
the cover. The only name
on the card was his
— meaning no one else
had checked it out.
He asked Mrs. Moore,
still working at the library,
about it. She admitted she
hid the book at his moth-
er's request so he would
read something else.
But the story doesn't
end there.
More than two decades
later, Mrs. Moore, still the
librarian, gave Atwater
the book when he joined
the North Palm Beach
Village Council. The book,
published in 1963, now sits
on a shelf in his Senate
office.
After much negotiation,
Senate budget chief J.D.
Alexander persuaded Rep.
David Rivera this week
to agree to allocate the
$21.5 million in state aid
that libraries need to get
the maximum available in
federal matching funds.
And that's the story of
how a 47 -year-old book,
Jeff Atwater and some
heavy pedaling may have
helped Florida's libraries,
0 dara_kam@pbpost.com
C7