KENNETT WOMAN TO GET MISSOURI HUMANITIES COUNCIL ACORN AWARD

KENNETT -- "Little Women" was the first book that made an impression on Evelyn Pulliam. "After that I read all the classics. I'm still reading everything," says Pulliam, one of six new recipients of the Missouri Humanities Council's Acorn Award.

The council's highest honor is given biannually to Missourians who have made exceptional contributions to "our knowledge of our history, our literature, or the ideas that shape our democracy."

Pulliam is the coordinator of public relations for the Dunklin County Library and has worked for the library for more than 20 years in various capacities.

She was cited for her "deep love of learning" and for expanding opportunities for adults to learn about the world through lectures and discussions at the county library and branches.

"Her service in the library has been incredible," said Meg Amstutz, program officer for the Missouri Humanities Council.

One program Pulliam has introduced to the Bootheel is Read from the Start, which provides books to economically disadvantaged families.

Pulliam also goes to one of the nine county school districts each week to read to elementary children. She hopes children who like a story will come to the library to read more.

"When they come in they let me know they're here," she said. "If I know they're in here I try to give them a balloon."

Bringing more people into the library and interesting them in reading is one of Pulliam's primary goals.

"Libraries are changing," she says. "We are competing with Nintendo, TV and shopping malls."

Dunklin County has one of the best rural libraries in the state, Pulliam says, and provides the public with access to the Internet through five computers.

She also was cited for stimulating interest in the area's cultural heritage by her work with the Kennett Headstart program, the Missouri Humanities Council, Safe and Drug-Free Schools & Communities, Symphony Kids, the Missouri State Library, the Missouri Conservation Department and local storytellers.

She helped bring the Heartland Chautauqua Festival to Kennett this year. "The first thing I had to do was explain what a chautauqua was," she said.

The number of people who attended each night may not have been grand, she said, "but when you pull 500 people a week away from TV, that is something."

The Missouri Humanities Council receives nominations for Acorn Awards in four categories: excellence in secondary education, excellence in adult education, excellence in community service and excellence in enterprise.

All six recipients will be honored Oct. 15 at a high tea at the Governor's Mansion in Jefferson City. Pulliam said her mother, several aunts, a sister, her husband and at least two of her three children will attend.

"I'm very excited," she said.

Pulliam's fellow Acorn Award recipients are:

-- James Bartimus, a Kansas City attorney who created a mock trial program called Voice of Justice, which introduces high school students in the American justice system.

-- Rebecca Schroeder, a Columbian who edits "The Missouri Heritage Readers." The series introduces Missouri history to adults who are learning to read. Schroeder also is a volunteer with the Missouri Folklore Society.

-- Gary Kremer, a Fulton man whose writings and lectures qualify him as one of the leading scholars of the African-American experience in Missouri. A former State Archivist, Kremer is now a professor of history at William Woods University.

-- Nancy Wegge, director of the Career Connection Consortium in DeSoto, was cited for helping more than 24,000 women in eastern Missouri return to college for training and experience.

-- Maryann Shephard, a history teacher at Brentwood High School, was recognized for fostering her students' interest in National History Day. In 1996, Brentwood High School was responsible for 60 percent of the projects in the Senior Division of the History Day Competition at the St. Louis Art Museum. This year, a student project about a Brentwood community destroyed in the name of progress was recognized nationally and by the Missouri Historical Society.