ELEANOR WILSON

1902-1991

By W. Harland Boyd

            After serving as head of the Kern County Library System for twenty-five years, Eleanor Wilson retired in 1967.  Her name, according to a newspaperman, was “synonymous with nearly every cultural event in Bakersfield.”  She was native Californian, who after graduating from college in New Orleans, was a teacher in San Diego for two years. Then she started her library career in Oklahoma, and subsequently  worked in Riverside and Tulare Counties.

            Eleanor was appointed director of the Kern County Library System in 1942, just in time to become a volunteer in the Defense Council during World War II.  After the war was over she led in the expansion of the library services with the creation, among other things, of a young adult department in 1946 and a traveling branch, in 1948, to serve outlying areas around Bakersfield.

            A decade after Eleanor came to Kern County a devastating earthquake so severely damaged the Kern County Courthouse that the library headquarters and the Bakersfield branch had to be relocated temporarily, beginning with a large tent placed on a parking lot.  Not only did Eleanor work with the architects for the building of a new library in Bakersfield, opened in 1957, but also new libraries in Delano, Taft, Shafter, and Ridgecrest. 

            Yet, as busy as Eleanor was professionally, she was active in many organizations, some related to libraries, but others with civic, educational, and community services.  She was president of the California Library Association in 1945-1946, as well as being a member of many of its committees.  Her broad interests were apparent in activities with the League of Women Voters, American Association of University Women, Kern County Historical Society, Kern County Chamber of Commerce, Campfire Girls, Girl Scouts, and Bakersfield Art Association.

            When Eleanor retired in 1967, it was from a productive thirty-eight year professional career, as well as a loyal supporter over the years of numerous cultural, civic, and educational organizations. Kern County was much better for her having been one of its citizens.