Much more than a library volunteer

Google ‘Dell Hood’ and the latest on him are references to the Wimberley Village Library. He’s the Board of Trustees’ President. He’s been volunteering there, but is finally retiring from being in charge of cataloging materials at the library, which he’s done for 25 years. He is also playing a big part of the new library expansion project, and board president until the end of 2021.

Mention countries from around the world, Ethiopia, Chad, and Nigeria in Africa, South Viet Nam, Guyana in South America, the former Yugoslavia. Dell Hood was there and a witness to American foreign policy and history overseas. He was so close that he could feel it, smell it and taste it.

There’s a movie script somewhere in his story. Picture this, in some secret bureaucratic government office, behind closed doors, there was a very serious looking government official, badge and all, almost whispering, ‘Again, we need Dell Hood for this job.’ Cue the James Bond music.

“I’ve seen a lot of change in the world,” he said. The big part of the Cold War period happened before his eyes and his story is more than worth telling. Each position he served became layer after layer, revealing the next story, to the next page of American foreign policy.

Growing up and graduating in close by Boerne in a class of 36 people, Hood’s story starts out innocent enough at UT at Austin.

“The Russian language was big plus to know in 1959,” Hood said. He graduated after majoring in Russian Literature and Language in 1962. This was the year of Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In these exciting times, he was enthusiastic as many graduates were during the Camelot years of Kennedy and joined the Peace Corps. Ethiopia, on the Horn of Africa was his first assignment where he taught English as a second language. After his tour, he went back home to Texas and off to UT for a Masters degree. He met and courted Gerin there, who became his wife.

The U.S. Foreign Service accepted him to the service in 1966 naturally because of his background in the Russian language and culture. A friend of his was really the one who was interested in the Foreign Service and was excited about taking the exam. Hood took the test as a lark. Hood passed the exam, and ironically, his friend didn’t make it.

“It was back to Africa (Chad), but I was enthusiastic about Africa. I was used to seeing the hardship in underdeveloped countries…(my job was) public diplomacy. I was to present information on U.S. government policy to both leaders and influencing people and to the public. I was part of the U.S. Information Agency, the Voice of America.

VOA was abolished in 1995 and became part of the State Department.” The VOA was started in 1942 to fight Nazi propaganda and continued to broadcast American viewpoints to counter communist regimes around the world.

He also ran the American Library at each stop, thus his love of the Wimberley Village Library. “At every post I was assigned, there was a public (American) library, where you could pick up a current magazine... We would put on American programs. Showing why in America, we are the way we are.”

He was also assigned a post in Montenegro, in the former country of Yugoslavia, before the war with the Serbians versus the rest of the country’s ethnic groups. It was a long war and shattered the nation into multiple independent countries.

Nigeria was also undergoing change at that time as European colonies were gaining their independence and it was the beginning of the end of colonies of France, England, Belgium, and others in Africa. Transitions that sometimes didn’t go too smoothly.

Hood and his family left the very hot spot of Viet Nam only four months before the collapse of South Viet Nam in 1975. But the experience was not what you would expect. “I really do like Viet Nam and its history and its culture. That experience was good.”

But the Paris Peace Treaty left a bad taste in Hood’s mouth. Hood’s disapproval of “duplicitous Henry Kissinger” and his VN peace treaty were very evident and were quickly glossed over.

South America and Guyana were also on the list, during the heyday of Jim Jones, the originator of the term ‘drinking the Kool-Aid.’ This is because the American preacher Jones and all his followers committed mass suicide, drinking poisoned Kool-Aid. “An American women’s group (was a front for) Jones’ people. They wanted to become closer to us. I knew about them vaguely for two years.”

Wimberley’s lure to him and his wife is through her parents who moved here back in the 1970s, and then their own property in the 1980s. After leaving his career in 1995, the couple retired here and the library became his passion. After being a part of American libraries around the world, it was time to make his hometown library the best that it could be, even offering its services modified through this pandemic.

Now his enthusiasm carries him over for the library expansion. “The efforts at the library are to get the local (individual) support, by buying in as a key partner in the values of Wimberley.”

Volunteering in the community, he keeps going. He is also part of Keep Wimberley Beautiful, and he is very proud of Wimberley. “It’s still the old KWB term, ‘keep it clean, keep it green, and keep it country.”

One of his proudest personal accomplishments is that of his family life. Throughout the very hectic times and spots, and different cultures around the world, he and his wife were able to raise two daughters, through all the transitions, who turned out well.

An advisor to libraries all around the world has seen vast changes to the world close up for over forty years. He was providing theU.S. viewpoint to the rest of the world. Looking back he said, “I can say I enjoyed all of it all and didn’t dislike any of it. It takes a certain mindset to experience other cultures.”

Slow fade to black and credits roll over Bond music.