Salem in 1997

1997
World Events

• Pathfinder sends Mars photographs back to earth.
• Princess Diana dies in Paris auto crash.
• "Dolly", a cloned sheep, is born in Scotland.
• "Titanic" is the most popular movie of the year.

In Salem
This 1962 photo was a part of a 1997 "Salem Public Library History" exhibit in the Heritage Room. This first library was built with funding obtained by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation that helped build more than 2,500 libraries worldwide.
Early in 1904 the Salem Woman’s Club put on a book social in the residence of Mrs. T.T. Geer. Fifty books were donated and these became the nucleus of the Salem Public Library. In November of that year, Mayor Frank W. Waters persuaded the Salem City Council to grant the Salem Woman's Club the use of the east end of the city council chamber for a library, "provided it should not cost the council anything." In 1907, the council applied to the Carnegie institution for an $18,000 building. However, they refused to allot more than $1400 annually for maintenance. Since the Carnegie policy was that 10% of the cost of the building be allotted annually for maintenance, Carnegie offered $14,000. The council voted to accept. But since the library board of the Woman’s Club had not been consulted, they immediately wrote to Carnegie’s secretary to the effect that the building did not belong to the City and that the council was not authorized (by the Salem Woman’s Club) to accept their offer. In November 1910, the President of the Library Board, Mrs. A.N. Bush, persuaded the council to increase their annual library maintenance budget item to $3000. She then persuaded the Carnegie secretary to grant $27, 500 for building a library. The existing library and the property were then deeded over to the City. On September 12, 1912, our first library building opened to the citizens of Salem. This facility served until July 6, 1972 when the library in the new Civic Center was dedicated.

When you visit
After the Salem Public Library moved to the Civic Center, this Carnegie Library building found a new use. The next-door YWCA purchased it for $150,000 and transformed into the youth wing. In 2003, considering rising maintenance and utility costs in buildings that were 90 and 50 years old, the YWCA sold the Carnegie Building to Willamette University, but continued serving the community from these locations until 2006. After an extensive two-year interior renovation, Willamette University opened the building as the Oregon Civic Justice Center. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dedicated the facility on September 12, 2008. From the exterior, a passer-by sees the same classic architectural design that characterized the Carnegie Libraries of a hundred years ago.

Other events

• Raul Ramirez is the first Hispanic to be elected as Marion County Sheriff.
  
• The Oregon Garden in Silverton is begun with a groundbreaking ceremony in June. It will open to the public in April 1999.
• The transit district, following ADA guidelines, converts buses for the use of disabled patrons.
• The Salem-Keizer Volcanoes, a minor league baseball team, is organized. They are a Short-Season Class A team in the Northwest League, and are an affiliate of the San Francisco Giants. They play their home games at Volcano Stadium that seats 4,252 fans.
• A group of prisoners in the State Penitentiary dig a tunnel 24 feet long before their escape route is discovered.
• In January of 1996, Keiko, the killer whale star of Free Willy and Free Willy II, was moved from Mexico City via cargo plane into his new home at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Over the next 32 months, Keiko is rehabilitated at the aquarium, where more than 2.5 million people pay him a visit. In the fall of 1998, Keiko was moved to a pen in the waters of the North Atlantic off Iceland, rehabilitated for living on his own. He died December 12, 2003, after the sudden onset of pneumonia in the Taknes fjord.
• A few imaginative residents create the Salem Multi Cultural Institute as a positive, tangible response to growing concern about racial tensions in Salem. In the next year, it took the form of Salem's World Beat Festival that was held in conjunction with the grand opening of Salem's Riverfront Park on June 27-28, 1998. This grass-roots effort has grown out of meetings in living rooms and coffee shops into a meaningful celebration and year-round community volunteerism. In 2006, the Salem Multicultural Institute moved to offices downtown and opened the World Beat Gallery at the Reed Opera House. More than 300 volunteers, 70 sponsors and 150 exhibitors and performing arts groups are involved with the festival annually.