For nearly four decades, I’ve known people who looked forward all year to browsing used books at the three-day annual American Association of University Women’s Book Sale.
But until last week, I’d never glimpsed the year-round herculean effort that goes into collecting, storing, organizing and displaying thousands of books for sale to raise money for scholarships that benefit local women.
The sale opens at 9 a.m. Thursday inside the Moose Lodge, 1400 Grand Ave. in Centralia, and runs until 6 p.m. both Thursday and Friday and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday. Book prices start at $3 for a hardcover and $2 for paperbacks, dropping on Friday to $2 for hardcovers and $1 for paperbacks, and finally to $5 for a bag of books on Saturday.
Last year, the sale generated enough money to build the endowment and provide nine $2,000 college scholarships to women. The money also helps middle and senior high school girls attend summer camps through the Women Supporting Women Scholarships.
As a fairly new member to AAUW, I thought I should volunteer for a shift to help alphabetize books at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Chehalis. After only two hours, I left impressed and amazed at the organizational skills, dedication and muscles of these primarily retired women.
As we gathered in a room stacked with boxes of books, Donna Loucks, of Centralia, apologized ahead of time for being bossy. She’s organized the sale for 35 years, so she knows what works and what doesn’t. I grinned and thought of the lyrics to the song, “Put me in coach; I’m ready to play.”
“Tell me where to go and what to do,” I said.
As a newcomer to the volunteer effort, I received the easiest set of letters — the last part of the alphabet, S to Z, with special boxes for popular authors like Danielle Steel and Nicholas Sparks.
Volunteers cut the boxes — 6 inches in height for hardbound books, 5 inches for larger paperbacks, and 3 inches for regular paperbacks — then taped already-prepared labels with letters of the alphabet or special author’s name onto each one. They spread the boxes on tables in separate rooms according to letters in the alphabet. We sorted them into boxes with spines up, so people can browse the titles and authors.
Runners — impressive volunteers in good shape with the muscles to haul heavy boxes — dropped off books to sort and picked up those already alphabetized. On Monday afternoon last week, Laura Hewett and Jo Martens served as runners, hauling books from one room to another.
I had it easy, sorting the books and occasionally taking a filled box across the hallway, but even so, I was sweating and sat on a chair for occasional breaks to catch up on email. My excuse was that I had already done water aerobics in the morning.
“Runner!” Cathy Cavness called from a nearby room.
Sitting on my chair, I chuckled and told her, “I’m not a runner. I’m a sitter.”
In moments, Martens or Hewett arrived to haul filled boxes to another room.
“The hardest part for me is lugging heavy boxes of books, but we have so much help and Donna makes sure we don’t overdo it,” said Hewett, AAUW chapter president. “Donna is truly the master behind all the pieces put together to make the book sale a success every year. She makes labels for every box, writes out detailed instructions for us all pertaining to different aspects of the jobs that are needed, and constantly monitors where we are in the process. It takes months to put it all together.”
When the Lewis County chapter of AAUW started the book sale in 1979 at the Lewis County Mall, proceeds were about $1,200, enough to cover a year of tuition at Centralia College. By 2004, the sale earned more than $4,000, and by 2012, it broke records by earning more than $12,000.
As the years passed, vacancies in the mall gave the AAUW more room for the book sale, but a change in ownership meant they needed to find a new home. The Moose Lodge offered its building, where the sale took place in 2023 and earned $16,000.
Last year, volunteers sorted 950 boxes of books and raised $20,000. This year, they have more than 1,100 boxes of books, Loucks said.
“I have been involved with the AAUW book sale for over 35 years because I love books, because the funds we raise allows our AAUW branch to give scholarships, and because we are providing a service to the community by making inexpensive books available,” she said.
Renae Seegmiller, whose husband built bookshelves, also credited Loucks for organizing the sale. Seegmiller joined AAUW in 2019, shortly after moving to Lewis County, and said that while attending her first book sale, she was “blown away to see everything sorted!”
“I could not believe how appreciative customers were for this sale,” she said. “I honestly thought with digital and audio books, no one would buy actual books anymore.”
But they do.
After losing the regular book sale location at the Lewis County Mall, Loucks called a meeting to ask if they should continue.
“Donna was getting a little worn out,” Seegmiller said, noting that volunteers stepped up to help ease her burden. “Donna is incredible at being focused on what needs to be done. Members are very willing to help but making sure they know what to do and the process is very taxing.”
Last year, Seegmiller estimated that women dedicated 600 hours to the sale.
When it slowed in my room, I helped break down boxes with a box cutter and stack them.
A brief tour showed hundreds of boxes of books stacked nearly floor to ceiling in many rooms, some waiting to be alphabetized, others already in boxes of general nonfiction categories.
“I love sorting the nonfiction into the four dozen different categories we put them in,” Martens said. “It’s not only satisfying work, but there is the added perk of seeing all these fascinating titles go through our hands. Also very gratifying is how well we all work together to make this sale happen. Everyone finds a job or jobs they can do well, and everyone is so generous with their time. I’m sure just the work alone leaves each of us feeling uplifted.”
Martens said she leaves each shift with a sense of well-being, comradeship and shared accomplishment.
Loucks organizes work sessions.
“She has done a phenomenal job of organizing the gathering of books from the public, setting up stations for pre-sorting (starting with fiction and nonfiction) and then further sorting nonfiction topics, fiction author alphabetizing, and the many odds and ends of types of books,” Hewett said. “Sorted books are put into boxes without tops and transferred to the Moose Lodge for placement on tables labeled for location of certain types of books.”
Loucks scheduled six volunteers for each morning and afternoon shift last week to do the alphabetizing, which was among the last duties before the sale. They had gathered books throughout the year, stored them in garages, and hauled them to St. John’s Lutheran Church in Chehalis for sorting.
Local Boy Scouts from Chehalis Troop 373 spent Sunday afternoon helping to move all those boxes of books from St. John’s to the Moose Lodge. Volunteers provided trucks, vans and trailers.
“We had fantastic help today from Scout Troop 373, which helped us move all those boxes of books from St. John’s Lutheran Church to the Moose Lodge,” Loucks said on Sunday. “For the next three days, we will be organizing them in preparation for the sale.”
“Last year, there were nearly 1,000 boxes moved to the Moose Lodge, which we couldn’t have done without the scouts, their parents and many spouses,” Seegmiller said. “The additional burden comes after the sale, getting rid of the books that do not sell.”
Everyone agrees that Loucks deserves praise for her work organizing the sale.
“Bottom line, Donna does an incredible job of thinking through the process, designing procedures, and doing an incredible amount of work, not keeping to a two-hour shift per day rule that we try to use,” Seegmiller said. “And there is no easy part.”
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
