Stillwater Girl Scout troop shows resilience after Free Little Library they donated is stolen

Jul. 7—Girl Scouting teaches many things, including leadership and resilience, and the members of Stillwater Troop 7384 are putting that into practice this week after the Free Little Library they established in Strickland Park last April was stolen.

"It was pretty hard (to hear it was gone) because of how hard we worked for it," troop member Evie Robbins said. "I was a little bummed out."

The Free Little Library — part of a nationwide network of cabinets installed in public places and stocked with free books — was a service project that earned the fifth-graders their Bronze Award, the highest honor for Junior Girl Scouts, Troop Leader Toni Ivey said. The girls researched the project, ordered the cabinet, painted and decorated it when it came in and stocked it by clearing out their own book collections and gathering donations from friends and family.

The project didn't just take their time and effort.

Their troop leader estimates they invested about $700 from cookie sales and money they hadn't been able to spend on activities the past few years due to the COVID-19 pandemic into the library.

They coordinated with the City of Stillwater, meeting with city staff to get permission to install it on city property and coming up with a plan to place it near the new accessible playground in Strickland Park so families could enjoy reading together. It was placed atop a post by City of Stillwater workers, who handled the installation to ensure it would be sturdy and safe.

"We were excited and felt good about helping kids learn to read and giving people a way to get free books if they can't get to the library or don't have a library card," Robbins said.

The library had been popular with the public and troop members found themselves refilling it on a regular basis, Ivey said. One of the girls discovered it was missing Tuesday when she went to fill it with more books. The post was still in the ground but looked like it had been beaten up.

She said the bad news came after members of the troop had spent the morning helping at Our Daily Bread Food and Resource Center.

After confirming that the City had not removed it for some reason, they realized it had been stolen.

Troop member Vivien Ivey said she thinks someone probably tore it off and smashed it for fun then dumped it in the creek or the woods.

"We were disappointed because we worked really hard for that library," troop member Jayleigh Cummings said. "We wanted everyone to have free books."

In the aftermath, Toni Ivey turned to social media to express her frustration saying, "To whoever decided to steal the Free Little Library @Strickland Park, you have not just taken a Free Little Library, but the hard work of young ladies to make their community a better place."

The post included a plea for the person responsible to return the cabinet and a link where people could donate if they wanted to help the troop replace it.

She said the community response, from expressions of support to donations and offers to help create a replacement, has meant a lot.

The troop hasn't had time to hold a meeting and decide their next course of action but she's got a pretty good idea they'll want to replace it. She knows the girls and they are good helpers, she said.

She hopes the troop will be able to find something positive in everything that happened. There are lessons to be learned.

"There's always going to be mean people in the world and they need to look for the good people," Ivey said.

Her daughter agrees it has been meaningful to see all the people offering to help and that inspires her to be more positive. The troop might even be able to earn their woodworking badges if they build a new cabinet to house the Free Little Library, she said.

"We have actually gotten a lot of donations," she said. "It's been nice ... Instead of trying to be mean and sad about it, we're just trying to raise money to build a new one. We're doing a good thing instead."

People who would like to help Troop 7384 can make donations to their troop leader @Toni-Ivey-PhD through the Venmo app.