By Daniel Hartill,Staff Writer
Man plans second library for Rotary’s Southeast Asia literacy project.

LEWISTON – After years of helping people in the Philippines – seeing so many sick and hungry kids – Gary Kennedy still seems shocked.

“You know, it costs only $65 to cure someone of TB,” said Kennedy, his large, callused hands clenched atop a table. “Some families there don’t make $65 in a year.”

Some days, the enormity of the problem overwhelms the 60-year-old Vietnam veteran.

He keeps returning, though.

In 2004, he helped create a two-story library in the city of Dasmarinas outside Manila using books and money collected by Rotarians around the Northeast. A year later, Kennedy attended the opening of the library’s added third story.

This summer he plans to return again, this time to create a library near the scene of a disastrous mudslide that buried as many as 2,500 people.

Kennedy visited the site shortly after the February disaster. He stood at the ground where, many feet below, the people were permanently entombed.

“The government gave up on rescuing them after two days,” he said. He wished they’d kept digging.

One life saved would have been worth the effort.

It is Kennedy’s hope that books – like food and medicine – can help the survivors.

“There’s starvation and disease,” he said. “Also, illiteracy is rampant.”

He took notice of the problems years ago, visiting former Army buddies in the Philippines. Several friends from Vietnam, upset with their post-war greeting back home, settled in Southeast Asia. They joined a sizable population of American expatriates, many of whom opened small businesses and raised families with Filipino women.

Kennedy, of Monmouth, wanted to led a hand. So when the Lewiston-Auburn Rotary Club began looking for a project, Kennedy was ready.

He returned to the Philippines looking for a cause. Other agencies were giving away food and medicine. Recognizing the link between financial security and education, he came up with the concept of a library.

“There’s no longevity in just giving books,” he said. “Once they’re distributed, they’re gone.”

The Lewiston-Auburn club, along with Rotary District 7790, which includes Maine and parts of Quebec and Rotary International raised more than $75,000 and several tons of books.

Officials in the Philippines supplied the building.

The first library, located near the campus of De La Salle University, has the capacity for 300 people and typically has 150 visitors at any time, Kennedy said.

The planned library, in the Layte province where the mudslide occurred, will likely be smaller.

Kennedy plans to set up that project in November, after he’s collected donations of money from Rotarians and between 30,000 and 50,000 books.

He’s already gathered about 10,000 volumes, which are being housed by File-Busters, a records management business on Lisbon Road.

Kennedy believes the books can feed people’s intellect, lifting some from the poverty he has witnessed.

“In some schools, all of their books can be collected on a single shelf,” he said. “I’ve seen it.

“Rotary is trying to change that,” he said.

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