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Benjamin ''Bennie'' Martin was taking a break from shelving books one day during his first month at the Cook County Law Library when the executive director asked him a question that young adults hear all of the time. The library director, William J. Powers, was sitting in his chair, ''and he has his hands folded behind his head and says, 'What are you going to do with yourself, young man?' '' ''And he looked so comfortable,'' Martin recalled of the day 40 years ago. ''So I said, 'I think I'd like to have your job.' '' ''Well,'' Powers said, ''I'm not ready to give it up yet.'' ''Guess what,'' Martin replied. ''I got time.'' Powers enjoyed the young Martin's comments so much that he later shared them with commissioners at a Cook County Board meeting. Today, it's Martin who appears before county commissioners in his role as the library's executive director, just the second person to serve in the office since the library opened 41 years ago. Martin, 61, has been at the library for all but one year of its existence, working in several different roles to assist visitors on the Daley Center's 29th floor. ''Most people who enter these doors, they've got problems. They want them fixed,'' Martin said. ''And as Abraham Lincoln once was quoted, 'Lawyers don't know any more law than anyone else. They just know where to find it.' So we level the playing field, and we take a great sense of pride in that.'' Growing up in Carrollton, Miss., in the late 1940s and 1950s, Martin learned firsthand about segregation in a small town that had separate schools for black and white kids. His mother was a school teacher in the community, which had a ''no fail'' attitude, he said. ''You didn't have the luxury of failing. We didn't have the best school materials, the best books, but you learned to read. You learned how to think. You had a hell of a work ethic,'' Martin said. If the youngsters slacked off on anything, they also faced severe discipline. ''When they said it took a village to raise a child, everybody in those neighborhoods in Mississippi knew you, knew your parents. And they did not wait until you got home if you acted out. You might get a backhand anywhere,'' Martin said. ''Or you certainly got a note to go home. And that was the worst thing in the world. Because you didn't want that note that said, 'Mr. So and So was doing this.' When they call you 'mister' in the South, and you were a child, listen,'' he laughs, ''it was prophetic. You know what the case was going to be. You knew what was going to happen.'' By the time Martin reached the sixth grade, his father had established himself as a sheet metal worker in Chicago. Martin, his mother and brother moved north to live with their father on the Near North Side. Martin attended James A. Sexton Elementary and Cooley Upper Grade Center, spending summers hanging out at Oak Street Beach and visiting his friends at the Cabrini-Green Homes. He went to Wells High School, and the starting guard on the basketball team can remember the time he dropped 33 points on Senn High School. Sports and girls split time as the teenager's primary focus, and he got by as a ''C'' student who could pull an ''A'' on a final exam when it was needed to pass a course. ''I was always a very challenging individual. Authority and I was something that had this oil and water kind of mixture. And it's not because I was being unruly or disrespectful, but I always was taught to ask questions … and sometimes you can get under people's skin,'' Martin said. ''But I began to realize, 'Wait a minute, you got to figure out what you're going to do with the rest of your life,' '' Martin said. ''I had rich man's taste and poor man's money, and I said, 'I'm not going to change my taste so I got to figure out how to get more money,' '' Martin said. It was during Martin's last year of high school in 1963 when he was introduced to Powers, who at the time was the executive law librarian at The Chicago Bar Association. Martin took a job shelving books and handling clerical work at the association library. He couldn't help but notice the lawyers who passed through sporting three-piece suits and polished fingernails. He joined the Army in 1965 and served for two years, primarily setting up roadblocks for long-range missile firings in New Mexico. By the time Martin got back to Chicago in 1967, Powers was in charge of the newly-established Cook County Law Library, which serves lawyers and litigants. A few days after he got home, Martin accepted a job shelving books at the library. In 1968, he used the GI Bill to pay the tuition at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He kept working at the library, pulling night shifts until he graduated in 1973. Martin was assigned to the library shop, where he made membership cards and got to know many prominent attorneys in town. Some of those lawyers convinced him to go to law school, and he started his first year at Northwestern University School of Law in 1975. He remembers how law school work kept him from getting to bed before midnight or 1 a.m., and he especially recalls the final exams that started in the first week of January. ''I mean, c'mon. You couldn't go out for Christmas. It was like sheer panic,'' Martin said. When he graduated from law school, Martin returned to the law library and established the first branch at the Criminal Courts Building, ordering the collection and arranging the material on the shelves. The library system now has seven branches. After he set up the law library in Markham, Martin returned to the Daley Center as head of circulation and later became head of the reference department. ''Whatever the library needed to be done, I was willing to do it. From making library cards, to shelving books, to charging books in, charging books out, working on Saturdays, working in the evening. Whatever was required, I was prepared to roll up my sleeves,'' Martin said. ''I guess you could say I was kind of aggressive. I always wanted to learn. I wanted to move up. And I was always asking the executive for additional assignments or new assignments or challenging assignments,'' Martin said. ''I wanted to distinguish myself.'' When Powers retired in 1986, then-County Board President George Dunne appointed Martin to the executive position. Martin credits the staff for making the library the best in the Midwest, if not the country. ''We have people that are just absolutely dedicated, faithful, committed. You don't know how many people have retired from here, and I'm not talking retiring with 15 or 20 years. I'm saying retired after 25 and 30 years,'' Martin said. ''If you don't like people, you shouldn't be in a library. Service is the bottom line. We're here to serve,'' said Martin. ''And I try to lead by example. If I go out and shelve books right now as the executive, then is there any reason why I couldn't ask someone else to shelve books?'' Dom J. Rizzi, a former circuit judge and Appellate Court justice who has known Martin for almost 40 years, praised his work at the library. ''He always demonstrated that he was a person of the highest character and really knew what he was doing over there,'' Rizzi said. ''There is nobody that I know that knows the library business, insofar as the legal profession is concerned, more than Bennie Martin. ''We really are lucky to have him over there,'' Rizzi said. When he's away from the library, Martin likes to play golf and shoot hoops with his 16-year-old son, Sean. Though his son is a standout athlete, Martin made it clear that he still wins the shooting contests on the basketball court. ''I blow him away and I tell him, 'Son, as long as I'm capable, I will never allow you to beat me in anything. Because you will be doing it soon enough, and then you're not going to know how to exercise humility,' '' Martin said. Sean is Martin's only biological son, but he also helped support his nephew after Martin's brother died. That nephew, Don Thompson, is now president of McDonald's USA. Another of Martin's nephews is Robert Martin, acquisitions manager at Chicago-Kent College of Law. For Martin, no two days are the same at the library. ''I really like it here. I enjoy the people I work around. Rarely do I encounter the same question, even in the same subject area of law. It's fascinating. It evolves, and it's something new every day,'' Martin said. ''The only reason we've got a job is because there's somebody standing on the other side of that counter. Don't forget, we all have problems. There are days when you don't want to get out of bed. ''But you got to find a way to divorce yourself from that and get into your job,'' Martin said. ''As [former Cook County President John H. Stroger Jr.] used to say, if you got to, go in a room and cuss until you get tired — but when you come out, come out with a smile on your face and take care of your business.''