Ahead of the final episode of The Library on December 25th. We asked Mark Tomlonson to share some thoughts on how the program began and some of his favorite memories. He told us how the show got started in 2010:
“People have told me for years that I have a good voice and that I read well. When Garrard Macleod did The Bookshelf many years ago it was a popular program. So I proposed to Klay Woodworth, the Program Director at the time, that I do a half-hour show where I read short stories, essays and poems.”
The Library first aired at Sundays at noon on WMUK’s HD-2 channel that is now home to Classical WMUK. In 2014, it began airing at 7:00 Sunday evenings on 102.1FM.
“There are several shows that stand out in my memory. There was one early on where I asked some of my friends in the local theatre community to each read a story that I had collected from veterans over the years about their experiences in war. I also mixed in some stories from authors like James Jones.
“Another favorite was a story about a young woman in an Oregon logging town trying to make ends meet. The story was written in the first person, and I got a chance to try my hand at some serious acting as I attempted to give the character a voice.
“While some of the authors I read are long gone, some are still around and in the Kalamazoo area. Many times, after hearing their work on The Library, they told me that I had found aspects of their stories they didn’t realize were there. I took that as a compliment.”
We thank Mark for bringing us The Library for over a decade. Our new Sunday lineup debuts New Year’s Day with Reveal at 6:00 Sunday nights and Snap Judgment airing at its new time, 7:00.