Volunteers Dan and Brenda Elby will be honored by Martin Library on Sunday, May 20. (Submitted photo)

Dan and Brenda Elby have spent a lifetime serving and volunteering in York and central Pennsylvania.

She taught third grade at Jackson Elementary School and continues to volunteer with children at the Kreutz Creek Valley Library Center in the York County Library system.

He began a company to provide secure placement and in-house alternative education for youth across the state, and 30 years later Alternative Rehabilitative Communities Inc. is still engaged in those efforts.

Together they have been chosen as the next honorees by the Martin Library Honors Committee.

The Springettsbury Township couple will be recognized with a tribute and reception at the library on Sunday, May 20.

"I'm just very honored that they would select Brenda and I," said Dan Elby. "Martin Library does just a fabulous job."

"What impresses me most is that when we go in there and see all of the young people and children in the library interacting and on the computers," said Elby.

"I'm old school to the extent that, when I grew up, people didn't go into the libraries. And now they're just alive with energy. In my era that I grew up in, you just did not see that."

Other service: Dan, 63, is president of the board of directors of Crispus Attucks and serves on the board of directors with Martin Library.

In addition to volunteering at the library, Brenda, 60, volunteers weekly at First Presbyterian Church in its tutoring program.

The Elbys are the 27th and 28th persons and the third couple recognized by the library's honors committee. More than $151,000 has been earned to buy books for the library in the names of the honorees since the program began in 1995.

An individual or couple is chosen three to four times a year for the distinguished list of honorees.

"They're all people who are supporters of the library in some regard," said Georg Sheets, honors committee member. "They are literary oriented, they love public libraries and education."

Anyone is welcome to attend the event honoring the Elbys, set for at 2 p.m. Sunday, May 20, in the Quiet Reading Room of the library on 159 E. Market St.

To place your name on the guest list and attend the catered reception, call Martin Library's Development Office at 849-6979 or visit www.yorklibraries.org for more information by Friday.

-- Reach Chelsea Shank at 505-5432 or cshank@yorkdispatch.com.