Long time collector donates books to the library

Gayla Wipf,

Head Librarian

Carl Sampson of Tea donated his entire Clive Cussler book collection to the Tea Library. Photo: courtesy

Tea resident Carl Sampson never dreamt of buying so many books, but when his step daughter sent him a Clive Cussler book and told him he should read it, he was hooked almost instantly.

Cussler was an adventure writer of over 85 novels and Sampson, a 96-year-old WWll veteran, collected them all.

Sampson, or Uncle Sam as I call him, decided he wanted to share them with the community and asked if he could donate them to the library. Although we don’t have room for all of them to sit on our shelves, we will keep them for those that like reading Cussler’s novels.

Carl told me that Cussler, who passed away in 2020, has one more novel coming out and he will of course be purchasing it.

Thank you Uncle Sam for your generous donation!

I was able to sit down with Carl one day when he came in to visit and he was filled with stories of his time in the war.

He said there were 75 men in his squadron and he is the only one living.

Sampson is just filled with stories and experiences while serving in the marines.

One story he told is, while he was in Iwo Jima, Bob Hope was supposed to come and perform for the troops,but Carl’s squadron was ordered to go out in the water so they had to miss it.

They were disappointed to miss him, to say the least, but they all had telescopes and were able to see Hope from a considerable distance. He was pretty small looking through their scopes, and the man couldn’t hear him perform, but at least they can say they saw him.

I thoroughly enjoyed as Uncle Sam went from one story to the next. Thank you Carl for serving our great county!