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More than radio...

Pat Peterson, Individual Giving Director

Phone: 309-438-3581
Email: pat@wglt.org

Pat spent her girlhood with her head buried in a book. One day she looked up and realized that she was in Peoria, Illinois just as the sixties were exploding. She packed up her Dylan albums and skipped town.

Eventually she landed in Chicago, managing Barbara’s Bookstores, then that city’s home for the New Left. Years zipped by and Pat became a co-owner of the stores, recognized by all as the quintessential independent bookseller (now an extinct species). She built new bookstores, renovated old ones, filled them all with great books, entertained an endless parade of international literati, and generally had a swell time.

In the middle 90’s, weary of battling the mega book chains and no longer amused by life in the big city, Pat shrugged off the bookstores, packed up her crew and moved into a little house in Bloomington/Normal. Always devoted to NPR, she started volunteering for GLT as soon as she got to town. When GLT's Individual Support position opened up, she talked her way into it. She has never looked back.

Were she to skip town again, Pat would take along anything written by Ian McEwan, the music of Penguin Café Orchestra, every Preston Sturges film and, of course, a radio. Content to stay put, she spends what free time she has badgering her teenage son into adulthood, keeping up with politics, getting grimy in the garden, and, yes, still burying her head in books.