We have amazing students at Ellinwood High School, and one that stands out for the library is Monica Hammeke. Monica has been volunteering for the library since I started as Library Director. She began with Summer Library, then on the evenings and weekends Monica would come to work with her mom and help out. We started asking Monica her opinion about YA books and if she would make sample crafts for our maker spaces. Monica had all 40 hours of her community service in her freshman year, and probably had more than 100 times that many before she graduated. 

During Monica’s junior year of high school, she took Career Readiness through the library. She assisted with more library day-to-day operations and Story Time. Monica was our library intern her senior year. Assisting with library programming, rearranging the layout, and completing reports were a few of the things she accomplished in the year that went so fast. Once Monica graduated, she became a sub to cover when one of our staff was absent.  

This summer, we were able to hire Monica to take on the task of cleaning out the library portion of the basement storage. Moving, repairing, and painting the shelving from the basement to the Ellinwood Grade School Library, rearranging the EGS Library, and organizing the new storage area for the school/community library were all accomplished by Monica (with help from Chase Gibson and some middle school and high school summer weights participants) in a short amount of time. 

Amy and Matt Hammeke have done an amazing job of raising such a wonderful daughter! Monica’s work ethic, sense of humor, and caring personality will all contribute to her continued success. We wish Monica all the best as she heads off to Kansas State University to major in engineering and hope she knows how much she will be missed!  

Sheri Holmes is the director of library and media services for the Ellinwood School and Community Libraries. She can be reached by email at sholmes@usd355.org.