Vald Svekis, former co-owner of Liberties Fine Books & Music in Boca Raton, Fla., died on November 12 at age 83 from complications of heart disease.
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Svekis began his bookselling career in 1973 as v-p for Paperback Booksmith, leading its expansion into the Southeast. In 1979, he and his wife, Sherry, opened their first independent store, The Great American Book Company, with two $10,000 lines of credit. They expanded to owning book, music, and software stores, including one of each at the Boca Raton Mall, in downtown Boca Raton, Fla. When that mall was slated to become the more upscale Mizner Park, Svekis negotiated the three leases into a deal to build the store of their dreams.
Liberties Fine Books & Music opened on Valentine's Day in 1991. As Sherry Robinson Svekis remembered, "After almost 20 years of hard work, Vald and Sherry had an overnight success. The store was embraced for its selection, its staff, its ambience, and the continuous slate of author events. Vald's brilliantly zany marketing ideas brought renown to the store. Dan Quayle's appearance was promoted with campaign signs sprinkled around town; Gloria Steinem was greeted by a window display celebrating suffragettes and featuring her as the statue of Liberty; Dave Barry signed Dave Barry Does Japan while attended by two geishas; Madonna's Sex could only be viewed in a 'peep booth' for $1 a minute, with all money going to the American Foundation for AIDS Research. Publishers called, and the Liberties newsletter read like a who's who of authors destined to fill the store five or six nights a week. Other highlights included hundreds of children attending the birthday party for the book character Spot; several bands signing contracts after being discovered while performing at Liberties Cafe; and John Grisham signing more than 3,000 books as well as event T-shirts. Liberties was sold in 1994, allowing Vald and Sherry to retire to Sarasota with their children."
The beginning of Svekis's life was especially difficult: he was born in 1941 in Latvia, a year after it was occupied by the Soviet Union, and "at the age of two his mother put him in the basket of her bicycle for a trek across war-torn Europe that ended at a U.S. displaced persons camp. They emigrated to the U.S. in 1949."