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BOGALUSA, La. (AP) — After 25 years as a school system payroll supervisor, retirement is all about kids and fun for Winola Holliday.
She strives to find the fun in life, whether it's riding motorcycles with her husband of 40 years or making kids laugh on Silly Saturdays at the Bogalusa branch of the Washington Parish Library.
Holliday, who retired from the Washington Parish School System, now works part time as a library associate at the Bogalusa library, doing what she has always wanted to do: work with children.
"I just love kids," she said. "I've always worked with children, my whole life."
Holliday grew up in Enon, graduated from Enon High School and went on to Southeastern to pursue a career as an elementary teacher.
But life got in the way, Holliday said. She ended up working in an office rather than in a classroom.
She and her husband had two daughters, giving her the opportunity to teach her own children. Daughter Lisa Turnage became the elementary teacher her mom always wanted to be. She teaches first grade at Franklinton Primary School and lives next to door to her parents in Bogalusa, which is great, according to Holliday: she's got three granddaughters to babysit.
Her other daughter, Theresa Hewston, was in the Air Force for many years and now lives in Utah. She has four children.
"I've traveled a lot," Holliday said. "Theresa was in the Air Force and lived overseas for lots of years, and I spent a lot of time over there. Now she's in Utah, and we do a lot of trips to Utah," visiting places like Bryce Canyon, Yellowstone National Park, Moab, the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley.
As a library associate, Holliday has fun and lets others do so, too.
"This is my outlet," she said wryly. "Instead of being an elementary school teacher I just get to have fun now. This is my retirement job and I really, really enjoy it."
Holliday was only home for about a year before she decided she wanted something else to do. Although she had worked with children at Ben's Ford Baptist Church for many years, she wanted more. She began working at the library Mondays through Wednesdays.
Back in January, Holliday said, "I was just thinking about it being such a long month with nothing fun planned for the kids, and I just thought about doing something on Saturdays. We do Storytime every Tuesday at 3:30, where we have story time, crafts, and the highlighted book. We read a book and then have a craft that goes with that book.
"That gets the children who are coming from school," she said, "but the children who have after school activities are missing out. I just want them to think of the library as a fun place."
On Silly Saturdays kids never know what they're going to do.
"We started out with silly charades," Holliday said.
"I just got a shoebox and put action words in it, like karate, and I let them draw out the card and act out the part and let them guess. They went crazy for silly charades. So I called it Silly Shoebox Charades."
Also on the agenda that day were a Silly Puppet Show and Silly Face Cookies.
Another Silly Saturday agenda was seeing the movie "It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown" and play silly games and do silly crafts, all of which are designed for kids to have fun.
All of the activities that Holliday is involved with are sponsored by Friends of the Library, she said. In addition to Storytime and Silly Saturdays, the library is currently promoting "Reading for a Bunny," and the 2014 Reading Program this year kicks off the first week in June with an appearance by Ronald McDonald.
"I really put a lot of thought into it," Holliday said when asked where her ideas come from. "When I can't sleep at night that's what I think about," she said. "They (the library) really don't require all of this. I just like to do it. I just like focusing on the children. I just want them to have fun."
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Information from: Bogalusa - Daily News , http://www.gobogalusa.com
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