The Kathleen Ellington Hargett Fund for ​Library/Media Center Resources provides one annual grant of up to $500 to support creative library and media center programs in Orange County Public Schools. The grant is awarded each spring to a librarian or media specialist who has proposed a creative program that: (a.) encourages students to use library/media center resources; (b.) inspires students from all backgrounds to learn; and (c.) focuses library/media center resources on literacy achievement.

The Fund was established in 2013 by the family of Kathleen “Kathy” Ellington Hargett in recognition of Mrs. Hargett’s love of reading and her lifelong devotion to literacy education. Mrs. Hargett served as manager of the Woodberry Forest School Bookstore from 1971 to 1979, and she served as library assistant at Prospect Heights Middle School from 1979 to 1993.

“Our mother considered literacy to be a fundamental right for all,” said her son, Steve Hargett. “She believed in the richness of accumulated knowledge and that the recorded body of knowledge should be made generally available to the public in the widest variety of forms. She considered ease of access to be critical in order to foster the interest of young people or anyone else who might be vexed by existing methods of storage and retrieval. Hence, she would be proud to be associated with the current efforts in library innovation that strive to make public access easier.”

Mrs. Hargett was born in Belmont, NC on July 30, 1931. She attended Belmont High School and Brevard College in North Carolina. She moved to Orange in 1969 with her husband, Ben, and her sons, Steve and Bryan. Bryan Hargett became a member of the Orange County Education Foundation in 2012 and was elected President of the Foundation Board later in that same year.

As for his family’s decision to establish a school library innovation fund with the Orange County Education Foundation, Steve Hargett said, “We believe that other families would benefit in knowing that their contribution will pay society back many times. This return occurs when even just one library patron or student has free and easy access to the written word. That one student has the potential to make incalculable contributions to society.”

The first Kathleen Ellington Hargett grant was awarded in spring 2013.
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2021 Grant Winner

Sharon Mohrmann, Orange Elementary School; Borrowing Books for Social and Emotional Success