Historian, author and library organizer Della Lang could never get enough of the things she was passionate about, said her niece Kathy Koebel of House Springs.
“She was always looking for something to do. The next thing!” Koebel said.
It started with her children’s activities, Khoury League, school libraries and mothers clubs. As the children, “the three T’s” (Tony, Tina and Terry), grew, Mrs. Lang turned her attention to the community at large, Koebel said.
She began working with a group of volunteers to establish a volunteer library, said Betty Ingram, one of those volunteers.
“We all felt libraries were so important,” Ingram said. “To have an area like this and not have a library, she didn’t understand it.”
Their work was rewarded in May 1978 with the formation of the Community Library Association. Two months later, the library opened in a small building on High Ridge Boulevard in High Ridge. By September, there were so many materials the library had to move to larger quarters in Lamplighter Plaza, Ingram said.
Koebel was baby-sitting Della’s children at the time.
“There were many, many days and evenings putting things together. It (the space) used to be a license office. The newspaper put it out there and people had books to donate. We got so many, the place was bursting,” Koebel said.
The volunteers wanted a taxpayer-supported library and worked toward that goal. The Jefferson County Commission established the Jefferson County Library District on Nov. 23, 1981, and Mrs. Lang was one of five people appointed to the first Board of Trustees. Funding came eight years later, when voters in the Fox, Windsor and Northwest school districts approved a 20-cent property tax levy.
In the meantime, there were bills to pay. In 1983, Mrs. Lang wrote the first of her six books of history, “Along Old Gravois,” and donated the proceeds to help sustain the library. Her late husband, Bill Lang, worked for a publisher and helped her with the project.
“We’re still selling that book,” said Ingram, who volunteers with the Friends of the Library.
“How committed she was to the library, to get that, to bring it to the children,” Koebel said.
Mrs. Lang, with help from other library association members, published a regular history magazine, “Reflections.” There were 16 volumes.
Koebel designed the covers while her mother, the late LaVerne Heitz, Mrs. Lang’s sister, sold ads to cover the publishing costs.
“Della always said, if there’s money involved, put LaVerne on it,” Koebel said.
Proceeds from the sale of the magazines went to the library.
Mrs. Lang inspired others, her niece said.
“She had this leadership thing. It was her way. People knew she knew what she was doing and she was genuine,” Koebel said. “She was one of the strongest people I’ve ever met.”
Mrs. Lang also was committed to recording the history of Jefferson County, especially the west side of the county, where she spent most of her life.
Mindy Hudson, senior genealogy clerk for the Northwest Branch of the Jefferson County Library, said Mrs. Lang’s work will keep paying dividends.
“She is the reason we have history in Jefferson County. She loved it so much. She was the ‘go to’ person for history,” Hudson said. “We will definitely miss her very much.”
Mrs. Lang’s interest in history stemmed from her own family’s shadowed past.
“Her father, William Luster, and his brother were put in a children’s home and then they were hired out to different farms,” Koebel said. “He (William) was 7 and Jesse was 10 years old, and eventually they went their own ways and they never saw one another again. In 1963, Aunt Della set out to find her family. She researched her family for 50 years.”
Despite the hard work, answers were difficult to find. As Mrs. Lang began to get up in years, Koebel helped her with the research.
“Little by little, I found her grandmother and where she’s buried,” Koebel said. “I got to see (Mrs. Lang’s) face when she learned.”
Koebel also was able to find Mrs. Lang’s uncle’s family, and she met Mrs. Lang’s cousin.
But many questions were never answered.
“‘I cannot solve Grandpa’s family,’ she (Mrs. Lang) would say. She could solve all these other mysteries but not her own,” Koebel said.
Koebel said she promised her aunt to keep up the search.
“I’m not going to give up,” she said.
As Mrs. Lang got older, she was sick at times, but about nine months ago, she was diagnosed with kidney cancer and “went downhill” quickly, Koebel said. She died March 22 at her daughter’s home.
During visits with her aunt in Mrs. Lang’s final days, “We’d sit outside and solve all the world’s problems. She could talk about anything. She was quite a lady,” Koebel said.
“She kept thinking I would fill her shoes. No way, I don’t have the drive like she did.”
“Life Story,” posted each Saturday on Leader Publications’ website, focuses on one individual’s impact on his or her community.