New owners keep local bookstore open

New owners will within a week reopen Cabinet Books and Music after it faced the possibility of permanent closure.

Local customers have followed the Libby bookstore through its 30 years as it changed hands and locations. When Patti Lennard informed her patrons recently of her intent to sell the store, they feared the worst.

“I was horrified,” said Jean Tracy, who has been a customer since moving to Libby a decade ago. “I’d be so terribly lost without that bookstore.”

Gordon Sullivan was also affected by the news, so he and his wife, Cathie, made the leap and bought the store.

“It was probably one of the quickest decisions we ever made,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan made a visit to Lennard while she was holding a closeout sale. The next day she allowed him to peruse through business records, and last week Sullivan and his wife officially bought Cabinet Books.

“It happened really fast,” Lennard said. “I think the day he came down to talk to me, I think that day he knew, but he needed the paperwork from me. Within two days I knew with extreme certainty that the store was going to sell instead of close.”

Lennard said she and her husband, Scott, bought the store two years ago to fulfill a dream of hers and also because their son worked at Cabinet Books for the previous owner.

Keeping the bookstore while helping her husband with his thriving taxidermy and bronze art businesses proved to be too much work, she said, especially after her son moved away in May.

Lennard said the response from the community of the possibility of losing the bookstore was overwhelming.

“Since I’ve been able to tell people that the bookstore’s been sold, the response has been just as strong the other way,” Lennard said, “with people being so excited that it’s not closing.”

Judy Matott has been a patron of the store for many years.

“I’m tickled to death,” she said. “For me, it’s an answer to a prayer. I was praying someone would buy it and keep it as a bookstore.”

Sullivan is a local published author who has made the news over the years through his involvement in Libby’s Community Advisory Group and Technical Advisory Group. He plans to work on his next book while running the store. Cathie Sullivan will continue to operate her photography studio, The Focal Point.

On Monday the couple worked together painting the walls and cleaning up the store for its reopening. If the inventory makes it to Libby on time, Sullivan says he plans to re-open the store on Friday, though it may be postponed until the following Monday.

In addition to offering books, music and educational toys, Sullivan will display some of his and his wife’s photography, as well as work from other local artists. Though they’ve changed up the look with paint and plaster, Sullivan says it will be very similar to the old bookstore.

“A person would be foolish to change it much,” Sullivan said, “because it’s been a successful business.”

Libby has one other bookstore that offers new titles, Good News Christian Books & Music.

These days books can be purchased online or from large chain stores in Kalispell or Spokane, Wash., but some locals cherish the feeling of a small, local bookstore.

“It draws people together – there’s just an aura of a bookstore,” Tracy said. “It’s a warm feeling, it’s like companionship. I never, ever order things over the Internet. It seems like such a cold thing to do.”