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CONWAY – At 92-years-young, Doris Dawson Flythe still loves to read and share with others the importance of literacy.

And now she has a library named in her honor.

A small, intimate ribbon cutting ceremony was held Saturday at the Conway Town Hall. There the family of Doris Flythe thanked her for instilling in them their love of reading by placing a Little Free Library at the Conway Town Hall in her honor naming it the “Doris Dawson Flythe Little Free Library”.

The Doris Flythe Library is the 97,398th Little Free Library to be installed and has been registered on the LFL Worldwide map.

The Doris Dawson Flythe Little Free Library has two compartments: one housing books for children while the other contains books for adult readers. The only rule for using the Little Free Library is to “Take a book”.

Once the book is read, it can be returned to the library, or kept and shared with someone else. Open to the public, everyone is encouraged to visit the library as often as they like. The hope is that you will come, take a book and enjoy reading it. The family promises to keep this library stocked with books for the public to enjoy.

Flythe – born and raised on Dawson Road near Spivey`s Corner in Sampson County – was a schoolteacher. She was the youngest of seven living siblings. Her love of reading started at nine years old when her sister read “Little Women” to her. Her passion for reading began there and never ended.

Flythe graduated from East Carolina Teachers College and her degree brought her to Northampton County to fill a mid-year vacancy at Conway High School. She met Leon Flythe in February of that year and they married in December. Together they raised five children in Milwaukee and lived a very full life.

Mrs. Flythe has attended Zion United Methodist Church since her marriage and still attends every Sunday. Even though she was not a teacher for a lifetime, she was a teacher at home, in her church, and in her community. She loves books and she loves children.

Little Free Libraries were born in 2009 of the love of a son for his mother, also a schoolteacher who loved books and children. Todd Bol from Hudson, Wisconsin built a box in the fashion of a little one-room school house to honor his mother after her death. He put his little red school house on a post in his front yard, filled it with books and invited friends and neighbors to borrow and enjoy the books he placed in it. Thus was born the first Little Free Library.

Since 2009, this idea has become a worldwide nonprofit organization encouraging the sharing of books and coming together of communities around the world. Little Free Libraries are registered, assigned a registration number, and can be placed on the Little Free Library Worldwide Map.

Submitted by Sandra Boone