Talking it Over: Remembering Jo Pardee - a force to be reckoned with By Wilfred Woods ~ Chairman of the Board Wenatchee World Wednesday, July 14, 2010   We learned that Jo Pardee Hallauer of Oroville died on July 6. Her husband Web Hallauer said she passed away at their home. Jo was 92. She came to Wenatchee as a librarian, and ran the Chelan County library with great success. In the mid-1950s the concept of regional libraries came to fruition when the North Central Regional Library got three-year funding as a demonstration library for the five counties it now encompasses. In 1958 the voters of Chelan, Douglas, Grant, Okanogan and Ferry counties approved the formation of the regional library, and Jo Pardee become its director. After 10 years as library director, she and Hallauer were married and she moved to Oroville, where they have since lived. I first met Jo during World War II in San Francisco. She was a cousin to my brother-in-law Dick Haley. I had ridden my motorcycle up from my air base in Southern California. She was a lieutenant in the Navy, I was a sergeant in the Air Force. She hopped on my motorcycle behind me to go to the opera that night. In her library career here, she was a force to be reckoned with. And she loved small libraries with their volunteer staffs. Her husband said an Aug. 28 memorial service is planned for Jo at Oroville's Trinity Episcopal Church. Ron - The above article written by Wilfred Woods brought back many memories of Jo and Bo and a few members of the Wenatchee World. Her fellow librarian, Bo Brooks and the others were annual clients of my uncle Ray Courtney on a three day trip up Mcgregor Mtn. This was back in the late fifties and early sixties when I worked summers helping Ray with the pack outfit. We camped at Heaton camp and one of the favorite hikes from there was over to the ridge where you could look out on the valley. We started calling this ridge Old Librarians Ridge in honor of the two librarians, Jo and Bo that so loved this annual trek, even though the gals were anything but old. There was always lots of fun bantering going on and the word "old" was just something that came out. The name stuck and eventually the "old" part was dropped. I figured some of the readers might like to know the history behind that name. Mike Barnhart