CIMA: Buried Book Lover to Sell Collection : Buried Book Lover Turns Final Page on Collection

An 86-year-old man who was critically injured when his huge book collection buried him during a July 13 earthquake said Thursday that his library is for sale.

Anthony Cima spoke publicly about his collection for the first time since the accident at a press conference at UC San Diego Medical Center. About 10,000 books filled his 9-by-12-foot room in a residential hotel on Martin Luther King Way.

“As of now, I’ll sell them as they come,” Cima said. “Money will talk. . . . I intended to sell them all along, but I didn’t make any special effort to do so.”

A housing inspector last year warned Cima to remove the books from his $200-a-month walk-up, according to city officials. And Cima himself said Thursday that he had always thought an earthquake could cause an avalanche.

The July 13 temblor, measuring 5.3 on the Richter scale, left Cima conscious, but bruised and pinned under five feet of tomes--ranging from old textbooks to James Michener novels to Nancy Drew mysteries.

“It came down all of a sudden,” Cima said. “After two or three minutes I gave up (calling for help). But I said, ‘What can I lose? I may as well keep yelling until I run completely out of strength.’ ”

He was found in his room by tenants and carried out by firefighters--almost 11 hours after the quake--after they broke down the door and pitched about 800 books out the window and onto the street.

Cima was admitted to the hospital, dehydrated and with a high fever. He suffered a heart attack shortly thereafter and twice was put on a breathing machine.

“He was trying to sort out what kind of happened to him,” said John Patton, a hospital social worker. “I think there were times when he wasn’t in complete contact with reality.”

But Cima spoke clearly Thursday and said he wanted to sell his collection and return to his apartment.

Dr. Mark Soll said the recovery was extraordinary. He said Cima may be transferred to the VA Hospital in La Jolla and could leave the hospital in a few weeks.

“At several points we didn’t think he’d do as well as he did,” Soll said. “I’d say he’s come out of this pretty well.”

Asked how he felt, Cima said: “Safe.”

According to his landlords, Cima was a polite, learned man who insisted on buying and reading four newspapers a day. He later gave the papers to a nearby restaurant to start barbecue fires because he didn’t have any room left to store them.

“If there wasn’t a paper, he’d get crazy,” said Steve Zaya, assistant manager of Barney’s Market. “It was just like food to him.”

Cima then would buy a cup of coffee and settle down to reading--about two books a day--in his room.

His life style was a testament to independence, according to Tony Cima Jr., his 63-year-old son who lives in Phoenix. The son of an Italian immigrant, Cima left school in the sixth grade, worked in a coal mine near Pittsburgh and served as an aerial gunner in World War I.

He later owned a movie-house chain, founded his own publishing company and wrote an anti-New Deal book called “Counterfeit Humanitarians” in 1935. His most important project was a multivolume compilation of early Christian writings titled “The Fathers of the Church,” which was completed by Catholic University of America in Washington.

“He was very independent,” Cima’s son said. “He had great courage business-wise. . . . This man has had good ideas for projects, but not the luck to continue them.”

Social worker Patton said, “Books have always been a companion to him. . . . As his son put it, he has his own life style and he chose to come to San Diego to live his own life style rather than being with any of the other family members.”

Cima came to San Diego on business in 1976 and moved here a few months later. He has two sisters in Pennsylvania, four children, 17 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren.

He lives on Social Security and a veterans pension. The elder Cima said Thursday that he has read 80% of his collection, but said the time has definitely come to cash in. He said he’ll sell paperbacks for $2.50 each and the rest are negotiable.

It’s unclear how valuable the collection is, but it includes many hardbacks that are at least 40 years old. Cima owns one of the 1,000 copies of “The Bibliophile Library of Literature, Art and Rare Manuscripts,” published in 1904. The collection also includes weighty works, including novels by Thomas Mann, and not-so-weighty writings like Alice Bach’s “They’ll Never Make a Movie Starring Me.”

Asked his favorite book, Cima said: “All of them.”