(Posted April 1, 2016)
By Sandi Latimer, Staff Writer
You won’t see Casey O’Neill wearing a cape or deerstalker hat, or carrying a curved pipe or magnifying glass, but she can tell you all about Sherlock Holmes, the much beloved literary character created by author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
“I’m a Sherlock Holmes-a-holic,” O’Neill readily admits.
And now she is trying to get a Sherlock Holmes club started in Mount Sterling. She has chosen an apropos meeting location—the Mount Sterling Community Museum where, among other artifacts, Victorian-era items are on display. The museum is located in the lower level of the Mount Sterling Public Library.
Four people gathered there March 27 to talk about Holmes, Doyle, and the possibility of forming what O’Neill calls the Sherlock Holmes Mystery Club.
The group decided they likely will meet on Sundays, with the exceptions of holidays, including Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Christmas. The next meeting is set for 2 p.m. April 17 at the museum. Anyone is welcome. The group will discuss “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” the third of the crime novels Doyle wrote.
O’Neill, a retired elementary special education teacher, has been fascinated with Sherlock Holmes since childhood.
“As kids, most of us remember Basil Rathbone playing Sherlock Holmes in the movie,” she said. “And in high school, Sherlock Holmes was required reading.”
As a teacher, she incorporated Sherlock Holmes into lesson plans whenever she could.
“When we were allowed to do our own curriculum, we would read Sherlock Holmes and we would watch videos,” she said.
Her love of the famed Inspector of Baker Street didn’t end there. Her husband is also a lover of Sherlock Holmes. For the past 15 years, the couple has attended the annual Sherlock Holmes Symposium in Dayton.
“We sit in a banquet hall and listen to people present these scholarly-type pa-pers” on anything and everything Holmes-related, she said.
The Mount Sterling club will be much more casual, she noted.
To learn more, call the Mount Sterling Public Library at (740) 869-2430.
