Toni Reece: Hi there. This is Toni Reece, and welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living magazine. Today I have Denise Hasson with me. Hey, Denise!
Denise Hasson: Hey there, Toni! How are you?
Toni: I am great, and I have a feeling you’re pretty great, too.
Denise: I feel pretty great today, most days.
Toni: Good. Welcome to the Get Inspired! Project.
Denise: Thank you.
Toni: Take a moment to tell us a little bit about yourself.
Denise: Sure. I’m a Berks County born and raised native. Lived here my entire life. I have a wonderful husband named David, who is also a Berks County native, and I have two beautifully fantastic children. My daughter Lindsay is going to be 30 in a very short few weeks. How did that happen? I have a fantastic son, Connor, who is 25. Then, the best thing is, I have a grandson, Bryson, who is 3. Everything that everyone says about grandparenthood is so true.
Toni: That’s fantastic. Sometimes I really do wish these were videos, because you should see your face as you talk about your family. That’s awesome. Let’s go into the Get Inspired! Project. What does inspiration mean to you?
Denise: It’s such a hard thing to define. I’ve been finding with doing creative projects that to me it’s such an innate type of thing. It’s just something that happens. I see something, and it inspires me to do something else or to change it in some way, or to see it in a way that someone else didn’t see something. It’s so organic that it’s almost hard to talk about it that way. I think that it’s just something that happens with me. I don’t really think about it, necessarily. I don’t know that it’s always purposeful in the inspiration, but when it does happen, it’s so exciting and so fulfilling if someone says, “That inspired me” – something that I did.
Toni: Is it a visual thing, or is it a mental thing?
Denise: I think it’s both.
Toni: Do you know it when it happens?
Denise: Yes.
Toni: What does it feel like?
Denise: It’s like having the dream that you’ve dreamed your whole life come true in that moment. I don’t know, because I don’t know that I’ve had every dream that I’ve ever dreamt come true for certain, and I think that’s part of inspiration, too. I think once something has happened that you’ve thought about, then something new comes along. It’s never quite finished.
Toni: I think you just said it eloquently. It’s having that dream that you’ve dreamed about come true. Having inspiration feel like that – I have done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of the Get Inspired! Project interviews – that’s the first time it’s been put like that. That’s amazing.
Denise: Thanks.
Toni: So, you take all that – you see something or you feel something, and it sparks some creative juice that’s happening – how do you put that into practice here in Berks County?
Denise: On a daily basis, I’m an elementary school librarian for Wilson School District at Whitfield Elementary School. This is my 35th year. I will actually be retiring in January.
Toni: Congratulations!
Denise: Thank you. It’s a very, very bittersweet thing. I adore what I do. I love the children. I love my colleagues. It’s just I’m ready. It’s time to go on and do other things. I’m also watching my grandchild, so now I’ll have two jobs instead of three. That’s life. I’m so thrilled that I get to have that.
Putting it to work in Berks County, I think I’ve been doing that for 35 years hopefully with all of my students. I hope that I’ve inspired them to love books and love reading, and now that you can get so much inspiration from reading a book. You can have nothing, but if you have a book, you can then have everything because of where it can take you, what it can do, what it can tell you, the visions it can give you, and the imagination.
I think that my biggest thing is imagination, because if you have that, you can do anything, and you can't let anybody tell you that you can't. I hope that’s what I’ve empowered all of my students that I’ve had over 35 years, that it’s up to them to make the choices, but that they can be inspired by so many things – music, flowers, people, anything. Don’t just say, “I have to be inspired by someone,” or, “I saw someone do this so now I have to do that.” It truly has to be that internal fire that is something you feel you really have to do.
Toni: Wow. So you take that wonderful feeling as you described inspiration, and you want to make sure that the children feel the same way.
Denise: Exactly.
Toni: That’s great. Who in Berks County inspires you?
Denise: Wow – there’s lots of people. We have an awesome county. As I’m getting out into this little small business and creative community that I’ve just become a part of, there’s so many wonderful people doing fabulous things. It makes me very proud of Berks County for that.
Certainly, my family always has inspired me. The typical things. My mother was beyond inspirational. My father died suddenly when I was 8 years old. She raised three children on her own in an era when that didn’t happen, a single mother household. We had very little money. We would go to the store, because everybody else would have a new outfit, and we couldn’t afford it, so we’d go to the store, we’d look at it, she’d inspect it in and out, and then we’d go home and she’d get out the brown grocery bags, and she would cut patterns from the saved brown grocery bags and make me the same outfit with the fabric that we’d get at the store for much less than what the outfit cost at the store. She was an inspiration in that way. She would take me to museums and concerts and things that were free, because we didn’t have the money.
It made me know that there is no excuse where sometimes people say, “I’m a single parent and I can't do that.” You can. It’s that choice. It’s hard. Now my daughter is, and she’s doing a fantastic job as well going to school at night and, working during the day to try to make a better life for herself and for her son.
There’s just so many people. Here in Berks County lately, I’ve gotten to be very good friends with Allison Shannon from Allison Clothing Company. She sells my cards that I’m making in her shop, and she just makes me feel wonderful.
Toni: Oh, she is. She has a very gentle persona, doesn’t she?
Denise: Yes. In her presence, you just constantly feel hugged.
Toni: I would agree with you. Quickly, what is the name of the cards, so if people go to Allison’s shop …
Denise: My business is called The Repurposed Page. I make new art with old books.
Toni: Fantastic. If you want to check those out, go to Allison’s shop on Penn Avenue. Allison inspires you. Who else in Berks County?
Denise: I don’t know who else to say. I would say most of my teachers did in good and bad ways. I had teachers that would be, back in the old days of course, things they could say that they couldn’t say today – “Oh my gosh. You’re so hopeless. You’re so stupid. (I couldn’t do math.) You’ll never amount to anything.” Then I’ve had one particular teacher – her name was Helen Riffle – she was an English teacher. I did a speech in ninth grade about wanting to be an artist. I did a poster and talked, and when I was finished, she had me after class and said, “You’re amazing.” She just made me feel like something I had never felt before.
Toni: Denise, what do you want your legacy to be?
Denise: I would hope my legacy was that I was kind and that children especially know how important they are, how valued they are, and that it doesn’t have to always be your family that encourages you, but that there’s other people, too. I hope my legacy is that I was kind to people; I listened to people; I inspired people, and that they know that through books, through literature, they can see the world even if they’re not able to actually travel through the world. They can see themselves in somebody and make a connection. I don’t know what else to think other than that. That’s like saying … legacies to me are super uber important. That’s the mindset when you hear about a legacy.
Toni: Oh my gosh, Denise. You are super important and very, very valued. One thing that I always say with the Get Inspired! Project is that the legacy people tend to think of, it’s what people think of you and how they remember you when you’re gone – but people have a living legacy, and it’s what they do every day. I can only imagine in 35 years how many children you have inspired. That is amazing, and the way you talk about your family. This has been a beautiful interview. Thank you so much for the work that you’re doing and showing up for the Get Inspired! Project.
Denise: Thank you very much.
