How to force preferred library search path for Apache

Can someone tell me how to force a default path of "/usr/local/" to a
new Apache installation.

I just install everything new and keep getting the error message:

libtool: link: cannot find the library `/usr/lib/libgdbm.la'

All Perl and all the libraries and packages have been installed to /
usr/local. The libgdbm.la file is in /usr/local/lib.

The system is a brand new hard drive with a new installation of Fedora
Core 8. I prefer not to bother with /usr/lib for my custom
installations because I don't want to interfere with the already
configuration of things such as sendmail and all the other distro
defaults.

I have installed the following packages and set them all to point to /
usr/local:
perl-5.8.8.tar.gz: /usr/local
httpd-2.2.8.tar.bz2: /usr/local
libtool-1.5.26.tar.gz: /usr/local
gdbm-1.8.3.tar.gz: /usr/local

I set the following link library flag:

export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/lib"

I cleaned and attempted to compile apache as such:

make distclean
../configure --libdir=/usr/local/lib
make

The configure completes without errors. The "make" errors with:
libtool: link: cannot find the library `/usr/lib/libgdbm.la'
Is there something else that I can do to force apache to forget /usr/
lib and use /usr/local/lib instead?
Thanks in advance for anyone with advice. Is there something hard
coded about apache that makes it totally depended on looking at /usr/
lib?
-- L. James
--
L. D. James
ljames@apollo3.com
www.apollo3.com/~ljames