SOAP LAKE - June Lee said she thought Soap Lake school officials wanted to meet with her because they needed help on a committee or something. What they actually wanted was to tell her they had decided to name the high school library after her.

The official naming ceremony will be at 6 p.m. Friday at the Soap Lake Middle School/High School.

"I was blown away," Lee said. "It really is a true honor."

Lee started working at Soap Lake school in 1969, as a classroom aide in the old Delancey-Houghton Elementary School. She retired in 2010 as the school's counselor.

Her husband Ken worked for the Grant County PUD, but they chose to live in Soap Lake because they wanted a small town for their family, and they liked a small town school. It had smaller classes, teachers, staff and kids got to know each other well, and the kids got a lot of support, she said.

She transferred to what was then Soap Lake Junior High in 1973, she said, and took the job of high school secretary in 1975. It was while she was working as the secretary that she began thinking about going to college, she said.

It was the kids that hung out in the office, at lunch and before and after school, that made her consider a career as a counselor, she said. "I thought I could help the kids more," she said.

Lee started college at Eastern Washington University at age 44, taking classes in the summer, working in a class or two during the school year while working full time. "Nine years later I had a bachelor's degree," she said.

She earned a masters degree in counseling, doing two years of work in about 18 months. "I graduated just in time to get the job" as Soap Lake counselor, she said. That was 1993, according to school records, and she worked as the counselor until her retirement.

Soap Lake is a good school, she said. "Our kids are wonderful kids." No matter what happens they persevere, she said.

Lee said she was lucky, "because I did something I enjoy my whole life."