By Craig Scott, Director of Gadsden Public Library
Every other week when I sit down to write this column, I usually have a pretty good idea of what I want to share with you about the Gadsden Public Library.
This week was going to be about some of the many programs and activities we have coming up at the Library.
But sometimes life changes the story.
This week, we lost a very special member of the Gadsden Public Library family and someone who meant a great deal to me personally: Bobby Junkins.
For many people in Etowah County, Bobby will be remembered as Judge Junkins. He served our community for more than three decades as Etowah County Probate Judge. Before that, he represented District 30 in the Alabama House of Representatives.
But around the Gadsden Public Library, Bobby was always something else.
He was one of us.
Bobby’s relationship with the Library went back to his younger days, when he began working at the Gadsden Public Library while still in school. That early job eventually became a career. Bobby worked his way through the Library and ultimately became Director of the Gadsden Public Library, serving in that position from 1975 until 1988.
Think about that for a moment. The young man who started out working at the Library eventually became the person responsible for leading it.
And even when Bobby’s career took him beyond the Library walls, he never really left us.
Beginning in 1982, Bobby served District 30 in the Alabama House of Representatives, serving two terms before being elected Etowah County Probate Judge in 1988. His public service would ultimately span decades, including 31 years as Probate Judge before his retirement in 2019.
During his time in the Alabama Legislature, Bobby remembered where he came from.
He helped secure funding that allowed the Gadsden Public Library to begin developing what would become our outstanding genealogy and local history collection. What had once consisted of only a couple of shelves grew over the years into one of the finest genealogy resources in northeast Alabama.
Today, researchers come through our doors looking for grandparents, great-grandparents, old newspaper stories, military records, cemetery information and pieces of family history that sometimes have been forgotten for generations.
Every time someone discovers one of those missing pieces, there is a little bit of Bobby’s legacy in that discovery.
His interest in preserving our local history was so important that in 2006 the Library named its local history room in his honor: the Bobby Junkins Alabama Room.
Then, in January 2020, we took another major step. Our genealogy collection was moved from the Main Library to our Alabama City location, creating an entire branch devoted largely to genealogy, family history and local history.
It was only fitting that Bobby’s name went with it.
Today, visitors to 2700 West Meighan Boulevard will find the Hoyt Warsham-Bobby Junkins Alabama City Genealogy Branch of the Gadsden Public Library.
I am particularly glad that we were able to honor Bobby during his lifetime. Too often we wait until someone is gone to tell them what they meant to us. Bobby knew how much this Library appreciated him, and he knew that his name would remain connected to an institution that had been such an important part of his life.
But my memories of Bobby are much more personal.
Long after he had been Library Director, state representative and Probate Judge, Bobby remained a frequent visitor to the Library.
And Bobby didn’t necessarily come through the front door.
As a former Library Director—and somebody who was certainly part of the family—Bobby knew the back way in.
Every so often, my office door would open and there would be Bobby.
He would sit down, and we would talk “shop.”
We talked about libraries, Gadsden, what I and my GPL staff members were doing, what we were planning and occasionally what Bobby thought we ought to be doing.
I valued those conversations more than he probably ever knew.
Bobby was a confidant and a mentor to me. He had spent years sitting in the same Director’s chair that I now occupy, and there aren’t many people who completely understand what comes with that responsibility. Bobby did.
He remained interested in everything happening at the Gadsden Public Library, and I especially enjoyed getting his “thumbs up” when he liked the direction we were taking.
Fortunately, I received that thumbs up quite often.
Bobby believed in libraries. He believed in preserving history. He believed in public service. And he believed in the Gadsden Public Library.
His career took him from the stacks of our Library to the Alabama Legislature and eventually to the Probate Judge’s office, but throughout it all, the Library remained part of who he was.
There will be many deserving tributes to Bobby Junkins in the days ahead. People will remember the Judge, the legislator, the civic leader and the public servant.
At the Gadsden Public Library, we will remember all of those things, too.
But I will also remember my friend coming through the back door, walking into my office, sitting down and asking:
“So, what’s going on at the Library?”
I will miss those conversations.
And I will miss Bobby.
But every day that the doors open at the Genealogy Branch bearing his name, and every time someone discovers another piece of their family’s story within the collection he helped build, Bobby Junkins will still be part of the Gadsden Public Library.
And I think he would be very proud of that.
Gadsden Public Library: 254 South College Street, downtown Gadsden (next to the U.S. Post Office). Phone: 256-549-4699
Genealogy Branch: 2700 West Meighan Boulevard, Alabama City (next to the Ritz Theater at the corner of West Meighan and Wall Street). Phone: 256-549-4688
