CDL Honors Dedicated Volunteers at Annual Appreciation Party

By Virginia Krueger

On Saturday, December 6, Chelsea District Library (CDL) staff and volunteers gathered at the library’s annual Volunteer Appreciation Party, and presented the 2025 Friend of the Year and 2025 Volunteer of the Year awards. This year, CDL recognized 2025 Friend of the Year Daphne Hodder and 2025 Volunteers of the Year Ryan Schop and Glenn Clapp for their exceptional support of the library. Originating in 1992, the awards recognize the enormous gratitude CDL has for those individuals who help to further the library’s mission by doing work above and beyond the normal scope of the CDL staff.

Daphne Hodder has been actively involved with the library since the summer of 1964, getting a library card the day after she moved here. She went to the library every day with her five children, finding a home there. Katie Wagner, a library trustee, asked Daphne, “You are here all the time—why don’t you just work here?” The library subsequently sent her to library school and she started working part-time in late summer/early fall of that year. Since then, Daphne has been a library trustee, advocate for the formation of the district library and building bond, patron, and longtime Used Book Sale volunteer. Perhaps Daphne’s greatest contribution to the Friends is sharing her gift of hospitality for so many years—from hosting afterglow gatherings at her home after library events to consistently commenting on the best qualities of her fellow Friends of CDL. We are thrilled to recognize her numerous contributions.

This year, two fantastic volunteers were honored, Ryan Schop and Glenn Clapp. Ryan is a wonderful and hard-working young man who takes great pride in his work and has become a valued member of the team. When he first began volunteering, he helped with shredding and organizing withdrawn CDs; he now assists with finding holds for library patrons—a responsibility he handles with care and precision. Ryan enjoys the quiet atmosphere, organization, and structure that the library provides. His positive attitude, reliability, and dedication have made a lasting impression on the library staff, who look forward to his visits each week. In his free time, Ryan enjoys studying the weather and spending time with his family, and he hopes to one day build on his volunteer experience by working in a library or a similar environment.

Glenn Clapp lives in Chelsea with his wife Karrie and two kids. He has been playing chess since childhood. As a young adult, he started playing competitively and honed his skills with books, videos, and regular play. His daughter joined the CDL chess club and Glenn found a passion for introducing new players to the game. Glenn wrote a pairing program in Python to facilitate faster, Swiss-style pairing so everyone in the CDL chess club would get more competitive games, and started tracking ratings for everyone and the club took off from there! Lately, and because of the huge number of kids that have passed through the program, he posts results of every Tuesday session on Substack, and the Rookery has become a chess.com affiliate.

The staff at CDL sincerely thanks all of the Friends and volunteers for their contributions to the library. Their generosity allows CDL to engage, inspire, and equip the community. For information about volunteering, please contact Linda Ballard at 734-475-8732 x202. For more information on becoming a Friend, visit friends.chelseadistrictlibrary.org.