Residence: Ellis Prairie (Willow Springs native). Birthday: Oct. 20.
Occupation: Director, Texas County Library system.
Family members: Husband, Colt; three daughters, Cassie (4), Quinn (3) and Lanie (7 months); father Mark Adams and brother Bobby Adams, both of Willow Springs.
Education: Graduate of Willow Springs High School; currently working toward degree in library science at Missouri State University.
Pets: “We have lots of them. We live on a farm and we have cows, horses, chickens, coon hounds and other dogs. It’s a little animal farm.”
Favorite food: Pasta “Any kind — I’m not prejudiced.”
Favorite ice cream flavor: Strawberry cheescake.
Favorite thing to cook: “I don’t really have a favorite, but I like to do savory things — I don’t like to bake.”
A restaurant I like: TQ’s House of Barbecue (Houston). “We’re really impressed with it. We like to go to Bandana’s in Rolla, but this is so much closer than that.”
Two of my favorite activities: Reading and riding horses. “My horse’s name is Copper. He’s a 13-year-old quarter horse. My daughter think he’s hers, but he’s mine.”
Number of states I’ve set foot in: 8.
Places I’d most like to visit: Ireland and Scotland. “I like the culture of everything there, and it seems like they’re very self-sustaining. They grow a lot of their own food, and they have a neat agriculture system. And any pictures of the landscape you see are always so pretty — that would be neat to see in person. I’d also like to go to a lot of other places in Europe, if it wasn’t so scary to go there like it is now,”
Favorite kind of music: Country and contemporary Christian. “And we listen to a lot of Disney in our house. I’ll know almost any Disney song.”
Favorite movies: “Tombstone” and “McLintock.” Favorite zoo animal: Giraffe.
Favorite card game: Solitaire. “It’s the only one I know how to play.”
Favorite board game: Scrabble. “I love words.”
Favorite plant: Iris. “It was my mom’s favorite flower, and I think they’re so pretty.
Favorite school subject: “We had a novels class in high school. All we did was read for an hour and a half every other day. I loved it. And I did FFA and I liked that, too.”
Least favorite school subject: Math. “I was terrible at it.”
A big pet peeve: “When someone comes into the library and says, ‘do you have that one book — you know, the one by that guy?’ But sometimes it gives us great bragging rights when we actually find something like that. A little girl once came in and said, ‘I’m looking for one of those books that are orange and have the fox on the front.’ It was a mouse, but we found it!”
A person who influenced my life: “My mother. She was fantastic. She was funny and carefree and she loved to garden. She raised my brothers and nobody would have ever known they weren’t her own children. She was neat.”
A memory from my childhood: “We went camping every summer. That was our family’s big thing — we camped a lot. And there was always something going on. One year they built a big teepee out of logs and it burned the whole week were there.”
Just saying…
Why is the library system important to Texas County?: “Why isn’t it important? Like right now, we’re so wrapped up in doing things with kids. We’ve been concentrating on making sure we’re another education resource for them, and that they have somewhere to go. And it’s not just reading; there are older kids who volunteer here, who maybe aren’t into sports or music, and they can come in here and interact with the younger kids. And we have the computers, so if they’re into Internet technology they can work with that here. It’s just a safe place for kids to be. And for adults, we have a place where they can get free resources if they’re trying to find a job, train for a job or get online and make up a resume. Or if they need to connect with family members, and the only way they can is through the Internet, they can do that here. We also can make copies and do faxing, and we have access to genealogy records and free access to other historical information — like the newspaper archives. And we have book clubs, and of course we have lots and lots of good reading material.”
Regarding the two main presidential candidates: “I think people are going to be choosing the lesser of two evils. I’m really impressed with Paul Ryan, though, and I wish he was a candidate.”
What Houston could really use: “A bigger library! Really, though, even just some other place where kids could safely go and have activities. Having kids myself, that’s really on my radar right now. But if the library was bigger, we could have a bigger children’s area. And if I had a say-so, we would have a community room of some sort and it could even be rented out — like for birthdays. My kids have birthdays during hot months, and when we have a party at home it’s just hot. The community room idea would solve that.”