By James Windell
When Gail Petterson-Gladney retires from the South Haven Memorial Library on March 29, 2025, she can look back at a nearly 25-year career of helping children.
Although she says it is a happy occasion because of her future plans, there is a tinge of sadness as well.
“It was a wonderful job and I enjoyed working with children,” she says as she reflects back on the children she got to know and the programing she developed for them. “It was great to work with the kids and now some of them come back to the library and bring their kids to meet me.”
At 75, Patterson-Gladney recognizes that it’s time to pull back from the two jobs that have taken up 65 to 70 hours a week for the last several years. In addition to being the Youth Librarian, she has also been a Van Buren County Commissioner.
“My husband I want to go camping more,” she says, “and, hopefully, we will be able to do that more this summer.”
Patterson-Gladney was born in Chicago but grew in Lacota – which she considers the greater South Haven area. Lacota is a small community in Van Buren County. She attended South Haven Schools and graduated from South Haven High School in 1967.
She proudly says that her seven brothers and sisters also graduated – and they all went on to college.
“I came from a large family,” she says. “My parents always emphasized reading. They weren’t able to go to college, but they said if we didn’t want to work in a factory or on a farm picking berries, we had to go to college.”
She attended the University of Michigan and took social work classes as well as pre-med courses. After earning her undergraduate degree, she was in medical school for three years. “But I got sick and was never able to complete my degree,” she says. Life got in the way of her going back to medical school.
Prior to becoming the youth librarian at the South Haven Memorial Library in 2001, she had a licensed daycare center. She had no plans to get into politics. Until she realized that South Haven’s Elkenburg Park hadn’t changed since the 1960s and it was rundown and unattractive. She joined a committee that was formed to bring about improvements to the park, but the committee couldn’t persuade the city to budget improvements for the park. That’s when she was told that the committee would have greater influence if they had a voice on the City Council.
“I asked and no one wanted to run for City Council, so I called my sister and asked her what she thought about me running,” she says. “I hope you have good tennis shoes my sister said. No one in our family had ever run for an office before.” So, Patterson-Gladney took that on herself and with the help of family and friends got elected. After she was elected, she was able to secure a large grant to change Elkenburg Park.
Among the improvements to Elkenburg Park were new basketball courts, bleachers, and new landscaping with trees to provide shade for picnickers. Also, restrooms were renovated and new picnic tables purchased. The South Haven Garden Club planted flowers and the community worked together to put together a large playground set.
After she served two terms on the South Haven City Council, she was term-limited and couldn’t run again. She decided, however, to run for Van Buren County Commissioner and has now served nine years in this position. She’s not ready to give up her job as Commissioner. There are two many challenges for her to think about leaving that post. And she is quick to point out the issues that still need her experienced hand.
“One of the biggest issues is the Palisades nuclear power plant and making sure that comes online safely,” she says. “We are excited about the small nuclear reactors they are going to be using and when Palisades goes back online, it will be the first time in the country that a nuclear power plant that was decommissioned has come back online.”
She says that the county commission is exploring the possibility of getting a grant to set up a new 9-1-1 department. “Hopefully, that will be in Hartford,” she adds. But another challenge is to entice businesses to come to this area and “To have adequate housing when they do come here.”
Patterson-Gladney also says that for the past few years the Van Buren County Commission has been working on county parks. “We want to make sure people know about the county parks and all of the natural beauty we have in this area,” she says. “We have so many rivers and lakes, it makes Van Buren County a great place to live.”
She and her husband, Aldus John Gladney, want to enjoy some of that natural beauty themselves.
“We have stayed at a KOA near Ann Arbor, close to where my son and his wife live,” she says. “We also have gone to the Van Buren State Park, which is very close, and Holland State Park. We’re new to the camping world, so we’re still discovering places to go.”
The South Haven Memorial Library will be holding a retirement party for Gail Patterson-Gladney on Saturday, March 29 from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm and the public is invited.
Patterson-Gladney says that she doesn’t want any gifts. “I would rather have people donate to the library for the staff fund. They are a hard-working staff and if there are any gifts they should go to the staff.”
