2025 Hometown HEROES Magazine LINCOLN DAILY NEWS June/July 2025 Page 7 The community took note of the hard work Gass was doing, too. On December 3, 2009, Mayor Rademaker recognized Gass with a Mayoral proclamation for being a recipient of the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award. The proclamation notes that “Studs Terkel recognized the extraordinary accomplishments of ordinary people in his chronicles of American life.” Therefore, the Illinois Humanities Council “initiated the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award to honor those humanities heroes whose efforts are often unnoticed and unsung.” Ladonna Gass received the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award because she “has kept the humanities alive in Emden through her work on Whistle Stop Library.” Additionally, the proclamation said, “of her many contributions to the community, [Gass] is being honored specifically for singlehandedly bringing the Whistle Stop Library in Emden to life, simultaneously preserving a historical landmark and giving the gift of books to the community.” Back in 2010, when the Whistle Stop Library was in its early days, Judy Busby and Bill Gossett interviewed Gass on their viewpoint show. In that interview, Gass said, “the great thing about that is I can keep the library’s reading material fresh with new stuff from people that are avid readers that read a book and they're done with it.” She is always happy to get new items because then she can rotate other items out and what's donated can be donated to someone else. Gass also told them in the interview that she looks forward to kids coming in and has bean bag chairs where kids can come in and just talk about their day and she will listen. From the time she opened the Whistle Stop Library, Gass has tried to keep the reading material always fresh and current. Though the building is small, it holds many books. Many years after the library opened, Gass has continued to have books for everyone from children to young adults to adults. There are even reference books and maps, so the library has a little of everything. The middle room is filled with children’s books and DVDs. There are bean bags on the floor and children can come in to read or just visit. Gass likes to talk to them about how Continue --
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