Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Haslam's visionary owner dies at 94

Elizabeth Haslam built the independent bookshop into an icon.

By ANDREW MEACHAM
Published July 17, 2007

Elizabeth Haslam in the store that bears her name - Haslam's Bookstore, which she was co-owner of with husband Charles.
	[Times photo: Bill Serne]

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Douglas R. Clifford] Elizabeth Haslam aka Tibby Haslam, of St. Petersburg, after a dive trip with Dive Clearwater at Clearwater Beach.

ST. PETERSBURG - Elizabeth Haslam had a knack for assessing a book's potential.

Sellers of children's books, in particular, would come to her store early on their tours to seek her counsel.

"Then they would go to the next stop along the way and say, 'This is a good book -- Elizabeth took five,' " said Ray Hinst, her son-in-law.

Mrs. Haslam died Monday (July 16, 2007) at the age of 94, but that legacy lives on at Haslam's Book Store, which she helped run for decades.

A schoolteacher by trade and demeanor, Mrs. Haslam created the children's section and spearheaded hundreds of book fairs for students. She also helped turn Haslam's into what is known as the largest independent bookstore in the Southeast.

She and her husband, Charles, took over the store in 1947 from his parents, John and Mary Haslam. Always courteous, Mrs. Haslam complemented her sometimes crusty husband, who served a stint as president of the American Booksellers Association. They built the store into a national icon for independent book sellers.

"They were like yin and yang," Hinst said.

Their vision persists. In an age of chain stores selling only new books and using the rest of the space for music or lattes, Haslam's used travel books take up an entire wall; language tapes extend to Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and Serbo-Croatian; and customers can buy a tattered copy of Jack Kerouac's On the Road along with a new John Grisham. An adopted alley cat lounged on a counter on Monday.

In the 1970s, after relinquishing control of the day-to-day operations, Mrs. Haslam and her husband traveled the world for six weeks at a time, preferring bird watching in the Amazon basin to big cities. Often their trips took them to remote locations where they volunteered as missionaries.

On a trip to Africa in 1983, the couple spent 26 nights in a tree house and contracted cerebral malaria. Charles Haslam died of the disease.

Mrs. Haslam remained an adventurer.

At age 81, she received certification in scuba diving and over the next several years completed dives in the Red Sea, Australia's Great Barrier Reef and New Guinea, where she was airlifted to a local hospital after contact with a poisonous blowfish.

- - -

The daughter of two teachers, Elizabeth White came to St. Petersburg from Lakeland in 1922. The roads were not paved past Ninth, now known as Dr. Martin Luther King Street, and a land boom was beginning. Money, she once told a newspaper reporter, "didn't go as far as the teachers. But we got along. We had books. I can't remember when I didn't know how to read."

She graduated from St. Pete High and St. Petersburg Junior College, where she got a teaching certificate as the economy was collapsing. She married Charles in 1936. They shared a commitment to Christianity.

In the 1930s, she taught at Mirror Lake Junior High while Charles managed the hardware section at J.C. Penny's. After World War II, she and her husband moved briefly to Pensacola. They returned at the request of his parents to help with the bookstore.

As Haslam's grew, so did the children's section. As a third-grader at North Ward Elementary, Mike Slicker remembers when Mrs. Haslam brought new-smelling books to the school for an annual book fair.

"She couldn't have been nicer," said Slicker, who now owns Lighthouse Books a few blocks from Haslam's.

Slicker said his respect for Mrs. Haslam only deepened through the years.

"The truth is, that she was always the backbone of the business," he said.

By the time Tyrone Square Mall rocked local retail in the late 1960s, nearly putting downtown St. Petersburg businesses on the canvas, everyone had already heard of Haslam's. The store drew authors for book signings from Bennett Cerf to Liberace, not to mention Florida favorites like Tim Dorsey, Randy White and James Hall.

The same was true of the emerging children's book market and authors Shel Silverstein, Tomie dePaola and Michael Hague, all of whom knew Mrs. Haslam and visited the store.

Employees remember a woman who dressed professionally and tastefully, who wore just enough makeup and had just the right words to motivate.

"Instead of asking, 'Would you like to do this?' she would say, 'I have a golden opportunity for you,' " said Martha Coit, 51, a Haslam's staff member. "It would make you feel special."

- - -

Mrs. Haslam may be remembered most for the low-brow civility she brought to the store, marked by the 10-cent paperbacks the store still offers. As Hinst put it, "It's hard to be snooty with a 10-cent book."

She sometimes dismissed authors who wanted to give impromptu lectures about their books, said daughter Suzanne Haslam, 62, who runs the store with her husband, Hinst.

"She was always kind," Suzanne Haslam said. "But if you were going to go off about something, she didn't have much time for you."

On Monday, C. Willingham, a retired St. Petersburg police officer, was busy scouting the mystery and true crime sections.

Willingham, 63, who now lives in Georgia, attended St. Petersburg Junior College. Mrs. Haslam helped him find used textbooks. Later, he came back to find manuals on police procedure. As a cop on the beat, he checked in on her.

He called her "excellent."

"She said reading sharpens minds," Willingham said.

He left with six paperbacks.

[Last modified July 17, 2007, 00:02:07]