Candy Seth, Lamb County Library Director Retires

Upon meeting Candy Seth, she is a soft spoken, pleasant lady who is obviously intelligent, and humble. She has been a person who is always ready to help people find what they need at the Lamb County Library. Whether it is a book on a particular subject, or assistance with a computer or accessing the Library Network online and ordering books for someone, she always seemed happy that she could help. She has been one of the reasons that the Lamb County Library is such a pleasant experience for the people who visit.

Underneath that persona however, there is an adventurous spirit and a strong desire to serve others. Candy grew up in the South Plains of Texas just inside the Floyd county line between Petersburg and Floydada. She was one of ten children. Her father was a farm laborer. They went to Petersburg to buy milk, but attended an all-black school in Floydada.

The school didn’t have a library and the black students were not allowed to go into the public library. Her school only had old used textbooks and other books passed to them from the white school in Floydada. She doesn’t remember seeing “colored” signs and things like that. It’s just the way things were.

Their first playmates were the farmers sons. They did not say the “n-word” or treat them differently. “We just treated each other like people. “We just played together.” We were all raised as part of the human race. She recalled her mother feeding “hobos” who would come by their home which was near the highway asking for a drink of water...and” nine out of ten of these men were white.”

In the fourth grade, she was going through the box of books and pulled out “An Autobiography of Ralph Bunche”. She could tell that he was black by his photograph on the cover, and decided that she was going to read that book even though it was a big thick book. She read it, and that book was the beginning of her love of books.

The family moved to Crosbyton during the second year of the school integration there. She did experience some people there that did not care for black students. She was one of eleven black students there.

They then moved to Ralls, Tx when their father got a better job there. She spent half her junior year and her senior year in Ralls. While in Ralls High School she met Mrs. Ruth Adams her English Literature teacher who took her under her wing and introduced her to the classics. She loved the Classics, and her favorite was “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens. Reading those classics took her to places that she had never known. Mrs. Adams and her husband had traveled to England and other places. She knew in her heart that she had seen all she cared to see of West Texas and wanted to physically experience other places as Mr. and Mrs. Adams had.

Candy graduated in 1967. She could not afford to go away to college, but her restlessness moved her to apply to the Peace Corp. She was not eligible because she had not gone to college. Mrs. Adams then suggested she apply to join VISTA. Candy was accepted and left for North Carolina a few months later.

She was assigned to Statesville, North Carolina a part of Charlotte, N.C “right smack in the middle of the state.” During her orientation, she lived with a family there. Her mission there was to assess the needs of the predominantly black, poor neighborhood. She learned that many women there needed to work, but there was no daycare. So she established a daycare. She found herself the sole caregiver of about 12 to 14 children. The federal government provided snacks and meals for the children. She worked for 3 or 4 months alone. They finally received a federal grant which allowed them to hire some help. In their free time they drove through the Smoky Mountains and hiked. They warned her not to go into the Appalachians because they were very prejudiced. She stayed with Vista for about a year and a half. Then she returned home.

She was restless once she got back home. So she was invited to go to her sister’s home in Los Angeles, Ca. She just hated it there. She asked her pastor there “what is our purpose here? He replied, “To work, come to church, and pay our tithe.” That just didn’t seem like enough to her. After a brief relationship with a religious group based there. She thought that perhaps God was calling her to witness. She was sent by that group to Seattle...which she hated. When asked why, she quickly replied, “it rained too much!” She had decided that her purpose was to become a foreign missionary. She wanted to join a missionary group in Puerto Rico, but she would have to pay her own way. She was contacted by her dear friend, Mrs. Adams who offered a solution. Mrs. Adams’s mother needed a caregiver. So she agreed to come back to Texas and care for Mrs. Adams’s mother until she earned enough money to continue her missionary calling. So she had given her notice and once she had earned the funds, she made her way to Puerto Rico.

She met and married her husband who was from Ohio in 1971, Tony, while serving in Puerto Rico. She was training to be a midwife. Tony had an Aunt who was with the Christian Missionary Alliance in Brazil. She was going to retire after years in Brazil. When they left Puerto Rico they moved to Ohio and later on to Lubbock where they worked at daycare and construction. They were invited to move in with some friends to save enough money to go to Brazil. So they gave up their rental in Lubbock and headed to Oklahoma in their Plymouth Duster. They made it as far as Amarillo when she went into labor with her second child. Their daughter was born in Sayre. Oklahoma and two days later they finally made it to Oklahoma City.

The family finally made it to Brazil and served in Rio de Janeiro, and later near Sao Palo. Due to political unrest and the impending birth of their third child, they made their way back home with the assistance of the American Embassy. That was the end of their foreign missionary work.

They lived in the Dallas and Richardson area for a few years, but unfortunately her marriage ended and she made her way back to be near her mother who lived in Petersburg.

She worked at the Allsup’s in Petersburg, then she moved to Lubbock where she worked as a bookkeeper at Texas Commerce Bank, Pizza Hut and finally cleaning houses for fifteen years.

She finally got her driver’s license in 2002. That spurred her to go back to school. “If I could parallel park and get my license at the age of fifty-five, I can go to school.” So she went to South Plains College. She moved to Littlefield after she went to South Plains.

She utilized the library at Littlefield and got to know Karen Varner and Mary Gonzales. One day Mary asked her if she would like to work at the library and that was the beginning of her career at the Lamb County Library. She always wanted the library to be an inviting place for their patrons. It was her dream job. She never lost her love of books.

She wanted to convey that “Selena has already done so many good things for the library and she is sure that she will do a fantastic job.”