CRESTVIEW — Longtime Crestview Public Library champion Flo Lembeck died Saturday morning, surrounded by her children, after a brief hospitalization.
“We are so sad,” children’s librarian Heather Nitzel said. “She was a fighter for the library …"
Lembeck was the Friends of the Crestview Library's first president. “The Whiz Kid” sculpture in front of the building is dedicated to Lembeck and in memory of her late husband Ted, who also supported the institution.
“When I think about Flo, I remember how she loved libraries and believed that everybody should love libraries,” library director Jean Lewis said. “She was diligent to make sure our library was the very best it could be.”
AVID READER
Lembeck, a former Crestview High School teacher, was also an avid reader, reference librarian Sandra Dreaden said.
“Flo’s favorite genre was mystery,” Dreaden said. “She would be back in the mystery section lapping up those books. She had a giant planner and kept lists of everything she read. She had read the entire Sue Grafton series.”
Each book in the mystery series starts with the next successive letter of the alphabet, Dreaden said.
“When she passed away, she was back at B,” she said. “I told her daughter, ‘She couldn’t only be at B.’ Her daughter said, ‘Oh no, she was re-reading them.’”
Lembeck was instrumental in establishing the Okaloosa Public Library Cooperative in 1998, which permits patrons of any county library to borrow books from any other library in the cooperative, Dreaden said.
‘A MARVELOUS LADY’
After Lembeck was hospitalized at North Okaloosa Medical Center last week, Dreaden visited her.
“The weird thing is, I went to go see her Friday after work,” Dreaden said. “Sunday I went back to take her a bouquet of herbs and flowers and saw her room had been cleared.”
Lembeck’s daughter, Anne Weaver, left Crestview library staffers a note over the weekend advising them of her mother’s death. The note stated that Lembeck’s three children were with her when she died.
“She was just so special,” Dreaden said. “A marvelous, marvelous lady. If there is anyone this community should thank because we have a library like we do, and a cooperative like we do, it was Flo Lembeck.”
Funeral services for Flo Lembeck are 10:30 a.m. Thursday following 9:30 a.m. visitation at the First United Methodist Church of Crestview, 599 Eighth Ave. Lembeck will be buried beside her husband, Ted, at Barrancas National Cemetery at Naval Air Station Pensacola. The Crestview Public Library will be closed in memory of Lembeck during her funeral so that staff may attend.
Email News Bulletin Staff Writer Brian Hughes, follow him on Twitter or call 850-682-6524.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Longtime Crestview library champion, 'a marvelous lady,' dies