ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
History usually preserves the stories of the winners and losers. But what about everyone else? In the 1970s, a librarian named Irene Ruiz interviewed dozens of Mexican immigrants and Latinos so they would be part of the historical record, too. From member station KCUR's podcast, A People's History of Kansas City, Mackenzie Martin has a story of an extraordinary librarian and the library she helped save.
MACKENZIE MARTIN, BYLINE: Consuelo Cruz grew up on Kansas City's Westside. And from the moment she started reading - around age 4 - she spent a lot of time at the library.
CONSUELO CRUZ: Especially when it was hot.
(SOUNDBITE OF BLUE DOT SESSIONS' "SAYERA")
MARTIN: It was the '70s, and a lot of houses didn't have central air. So they'd go to their local branch to keep cool and to read, of course.
CRUZ: If I had homework to do, it's like, well, let's go to the library.
MARTIN: Consuelo liked the whole vibe there.
CRUZ: You know, like, the old card catalogs.
MARTIN: Her favorite part about the library, though, was a person - Irene Ruiz, the branch librarian, a stylish, petite woman about 5 feet tall.
CRUZ: She would always walk around with a beret and leather driving gloves.
MARTIN: Irene was known for fostering a love of reading in even the most reluctant readers. She also spoke Spanish, which made her library a particularly inviting place for the Mexican immigrants and Latinos who settled on the Westside in such large numbers.
CRUZ: She always felt like their stories were important to share, and I'm so grateful that she did. I think she just had a love for the community that was contagious, and, at least for me, it instilled a lot of pride.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CUATROCIENEGAS")
CARLA MORRISON: (Singing in Spanish).
MARTIN: Irene started at what was then known as the west branch of the Kansas City Public Library in the '70s. At the time, there weren't many Spanish books in the collection, which really disappointed Irene. According to Julie Robinson at KCPL, not many places in the U.S. printed in Spanish, so Irene wrote letters overseas to book publishers in Spain and Latin America.
JULIE ROBINSON: Then they would write back and say, OK, we can give you this, and these are the prices.
MARTIN: Soon, she was stocking Spanish language newspapers and movies, in addition to Spanish comic books and fotonovelas, for children and adults. Irene was pretty much a one-stop shop for anything anyone needed. She helped people fill out paperwork and job applications, study for citizenship tests and learn English. She'd act as an interpreter for undocumented people at the courthouse, even making phone calls on their behalf. So it seemed like no job was really too small, like she always had a second.
ROBINSON: Oh, yes.
MARTIN: I like that.
ROBINSON: She didn't sit around and think, golly, what should I do now? You know, she always wanted people, no matter who you were, to be welcome. And to do that, the people in the library had to be welcoming.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CUATROCIENEGAS")
MORRISON: (Singing in Spanish).
MARTIN: Another unique thing about Irene, even for a librarian, was her passion for documenting life in Kansas City. In the 1970s and '80s, she conducted nearly 60 interviews in both English and Spanish. Her project is one of the only existing oral histories of Mexican immigrants coming to Kansas City.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
IRENE RUIZ: This is Irene Ruiz interviewing Mr. Paul Rojas at the Kansas City, Missouri, Public Library. Mr. Rojas...
MARTIN: Back then, Irene interviewed incredibly well-known Kansas Citians, like Paul Rojas, Missouri's first Hispanic state legislator, in addition to other working folks in the neighborhood - a restaurant worker, a post office employee, a police officer, a nanny.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
I RUIZ: (Speaking Spanish).
JOSEFA: (Speaking Spanish).
I RUIZ: (Speaking Spanish, laughing).
MARTIN: It's surreal to listen to them all these years later because of how candid everyone was. I mean, people opened up to her about the most pivotal moments in their lives.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
PAUL ROJAS: Coming from the neighborhood that I come from and the background that I have, to be serving a salad to a governor, sticking around to listen to see what they talk about was worth it...
ROBERT HERNANDEZ: I want all Mexican Americans from this day forward to have that choice to be capable of being a doctor or a lawyer or whatever they want to be.
MARTIN: Bret Ruiz, Irene's son, says his mom's goal was to change whose stories were preserved. She didn't like how history has mostly been written about the powerful.
BRET RUIZ: Napoleon, Queen Elizabeth - it's all about winners. But who's going to tell the story of people that aren't losers - they're just regular Joes?
MARTIN: We have materials here that are not available anywhere else, Irene told the newspaper in 1996, and that's important, she said, because books open up a new world to you.
B RUIZ: They were very adamant about equal rights and standing up for the underdog. They felt that they had to speak up for other Latinos because nobody else was going to do it.
MARTIN: Despite all the work Irene did for the west branch library, though, its importance to the neighborhood wasn't obvious to everyone.
(SOUNDBITE OF BLUE DOT SESSIONS' "LOBO LOBO")
MARTIN: In the 1990s, the Kansas City Public Library board actually considered shutting down the location entirely. Since the Westside is a walking community, that would have made the library way less accessible to residents. Julie Robinson says Irene went door to door to campaign against the move.
ROBINSON: Then the community leaders got together, and that really changed a lot. It was very definite - you will leave the library on the Westside. The Westside wants their library.
MARTIN: In the end, the library board decided to not only keep the branch on the Westside but majorly expand it. Comforted by the fact that the library was saved, Irene happily retired in 1996 at the age of 76. And a few years later when the community was deciding what to call the new library, people aggressively advocated for naming it after their beloved retired librarian.
ROBINSON: People were very vocal about it at board meetings.
MARTIN: Pete Cedillo was one of those vocal people. He remembers attending a pivotal board meeting and throwing a petition with hundreds of signatures in the board's face.
PETE CEDILLO: I raised my hand and said, well, my community has already spoken.
(SOUNDBITE OF BLUE DOT SESSIONS' "GENTLE SON")
MARTIN: The Irene H. Ruiz Biblioteca de las Americas opened in September 2001, shortly before Irene's 81st birthday. And it's packed with plants, brightly colored murals and sunshine streaming in through huge floor-to-ceiling windows. Right behind the checkout counter, there's even this vibrant watercolor painting of Irene - kind eyes, beaming smile.
CEDILLO: May she rest in peace. The lady deserves every credit that she got.
MARTIN: In addition to bilingual staff members and a huge selection of books in Spanish, the library also has a conversational Spanish club.
CHEYENNE BROWN: So if, like, everyone within the neighborhood who just, like, wants to practice their Spanish - they come and just chat.
MARTIN: It also has yoga classes, a seed library and bird-watching backpacks.
BROWN: It comes with two types of binoculars - a small one and a big one - and then it also has a guide of Missouri birds.
MARTIN: That's so cool.
BROWN: Yep.
MARTIN: When Julie Robinson took over as branch librarian here in 2003, Irene was a fixture. She'd regularly come in for story time and other special events, and she was well into her 80s by then - something she somewhat covered up by dyeing her hair a really bright red.
ROBINSON: That used to be a secret, by the way. She would never tell anyone what year she was born. She wouldn't even tell her children.
MARTIN: Why? Why did she keep it a secret?
ROBINSON: She didn't want anyone to know how old she was, because if you knew how old she was, then she would be treated as an old woman.
MARTIN: An old woman Irene was not. She was still very active in the community. In 2006, she was even selected as a local hero at Primitivo Garcia World Language School, a few blocks north of the library. And Mrs. Arras' ESL class wrote this song for her.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL GROUP: (Singing) Thank you, Irene Ruiz. Thank you for your kindness. Thank you for the books. Thank you for the dreams. Thank you, Irene Ruiz. One, two, three...
MARTIN: The song cemented Irene's place as a celebrity around town. I'm not kidding. A student once asked for her autograph. And realizing this, teachers used it to their advantage. When kids would misbehave, they'd threaten to call Irene.
ROBINSON: If I have to call her to come in and talk to you, do you want me to do that? And it was like, no, no, no.
MARTIN: Why were they kind of afraid of her? Was she a little bit - could she be a little bit stern sometimes?
ROBINSON: I think they were just afraid of disappointing her.
MARTIN: Oh, my God. That's so sweet.
ROBINSON: I think that's really what it was. In their mind, she was such a great person, such a great model that to disappoint her would be, you know, like disappointing the No. 1 person in your life.
(SOUNDBITE OF EL BARZON'S "LOS AMPARITO")
MARTIN: Irene died on September 3, 2023, at the age of 102. And according to her son, Bret, these are her tips for living so long - she loved to dance. She liked her Martini but never drank to excess. She watched what she ate. She never smoked. She didn't like the sun, and she did crosswords and read books well into her 90s. So, you know, do with that what you will.
SCHMITZ: That was an excerpt from member station KCUR's podcast, A People's History of Kansas City. You can find it at kcur.org or wherever you find your podcasts. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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