Bradbury on Carnegie

Author Ray Bradbury died on June 5 at age 91. A post in the Fine Books & Collections Blog by Nate Pedersen about Bradbury reminded me of a letter (shown above) in my collection from Bradbury to a friend in which he refers to Carnegie as "one of my favorite Revolutionary heroes of American History". He continues, "Yep. Revolutionary. He gave us 2500 free libraries and Trusted us to USE them, without restraint. What a fabulous creative man." I came across this other pro-library quote from Bradbury in another blog post: "Libraries raised me. I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries, because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years." It's tough to loose such a great library supporter.