It’s not just reading and research materials you’ll find at the Dimmick Memorial Library in Jim Thorpe. There’s also a chess table that’s available to visitors during the warmer weather months thanks to Lisa Lux and her sons.

Lux, a teacher with the Carbon Career & Technical Institute, Life Skills Class (CCTI-CLIU), commissioned the masonry chess table in memory of a friend two years ago as well as the chess pieces.

Until this week, people playing chess on the front porch of the library sat on folding chairs.

This week, new custom benches built by a student in the CCTI-CLIU class were delivered to the library.

The benches, also of masonry construction, were the project of Traven Butler of Weatherly, a senior in the vo-tech’s carpentry class.

Carpentry instructor Jeffrey Hazelton said, “Traven wanted to build them for Life Skills for a senior project. We worked on it off-and-on for over a month.”

Hazelton and Butler built the frames in two parts, a pedestal and a bench. Then students Caleb Gaffney of Palmerton and John Puzzetti of Weatherly helped pour and mix the concrete.

“We’ve built a lot of cement benches that are in Jim Thorpe,” Hazelton said of his vo-tech class. One was donated to the Lehigh Valley Hospital - Carbon in Mahoning Township in memory of a senior class member who is deceased.

Traven constructed one last year for the Special Olympics bocci committee.

It was Hazelton’s carpentry class which also had built the chess table. He said several female students had worked on that project.

Lux said a volunteer at the library, Karen Bushnell, asked that the benches be made in memory of the late Edna Brennan, who also was a library volunteer.

Lux said Edna Brennan was “very involved in the library.” She was a native of Ireland who moved to Jim Thorpe. Here her son and daughter-in-law opened a business, the Marion Hose Bar.

Lux said her family had the chess table built and donated the pieces in memory of the late Howard Meiser. Meiser had resided in the Navigation Building and was well-known in the downtown community of Jim Thorpe.

She said, “Howard loved chess and would teach or play anyone who would ask, including all three of my sons. When he died, the boys were looking for a way to honor Howard and his passion for chess. They came up with the idea for the chess table at the library.”

Kara Edmonds, director of the Dimmick Memorial Library, said she is pleased with the donations and visitors to the library enjoy them.

“I’m very excited to have a more permanent sitting situation,” she said.

Lux said she was thrilled when Butler so willingly accepted the bench construction project but not surprised.

“He’s always willing to help,” she said.

She said his senior quote for the yearbook is very fitting for him.

It is: “Be nice.”