Family is important to Barbara Lee Myers. That’s why, when her son-in-law Ken Hammond moved his family to Las Cruces, she joined them – even though she is not fond of the area’s desert climate.

Hammond had accepted a faculty position in the Department of History at New Mexico State University. His area of expertise is East Asian Studies, particularly China. As he was settling in, he quickly realized that current publications related to this area of study were severely lacking in the university library.

Myers stepped forward and made her first gift to NMSU to create an endowment in the library to support purchasing Asian studies materials in 1996. Additional gifts brought that fund to nearly $40,000.

When the university was raising funds to remodel the vacant YMCA building into the Conroy Honors Center, Myers committed $25,000 to the building fund, naming the kitchen area in honor of her daughter Elvira Hammond.

Her latest gifts will create an endowment that supports a special projects assistant in the Rio Grande Historical Collections of the university library. This fund gives a graduate student in the public history program an opportunity to work on organizing the personal collections that have been gifted to RGHC.

“I have always been interested in history and personal history is very important. The activities of individuals are the foundation of who we are as a country,” she says.

When asked why she has been such a strong supporter of NMSU, Myers, who earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Ohio State University, says, “I have always been impressed by the quality of the faculty at this university and, quite simply, NMSU needs it more.”

She has chosen to support the library because “they make me feel like I am a part of their family.” In 2002 the library named a campus street in her honor and has included her in activities sponsored by RGHC as well.