Baptist donates toward bicycle storage building for library

Baptist Memorial Hospital-Union County has donated $1,000 for a building to house bicycles now available to the public at the Union County Library.

Baptist CEO Walter Grace presented the check Tuesday to Librarian Sissy Bullock and library board members Gwyn Pennebaker and Glen Duckworth. The money will be applied to the $14,000 cost of a small building to be constructed on the library property. The Baptist donation means that $9,000 of the funds needed for the building have been raised.

The Union County Library manages a recently inaugurated program that makes bicycles available to people who wish to ride them on the Tanglefoot Trail, which is immediately adjacent to the library. The Tanglefoot Trail is a nationally recognized 43-mile hiking and cycling trail that runs from New Albany to Houston, Mississippi.

The Tanglefoot Trail follows the original right-of-way of a railroad built in the 1870s by Col. William Clark Falkner. Col. Falkner was the great-grandfather of William Cuthbert Faulkner, born in New Albany in 1897 and winner of the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature.

“Baptist Memorial Hospital – Union County is proud to support this effort to encourage the community to be active, and the bicycle rental program is a great way to encourage families to exercise together,” said a hospital statement.