Told to Sell, Earthquake Book Victim Seeks Time

His books were his passion--and they nearly killed him.

Now, two months after Anthony Cima was critically injured in his room when an earthquake buried him in hundreds of his beloved books, he is being told by city housing inspectors to get rid of them.

The San Diego Housing Division has ordered Cima to remove his 10,000-book collection from his third-floor room at the downtown Monte Carlo Hotel because the weight of the books is a safety hazard. Friday was the deadline, but Cima was given a temporary reprieve. He requested a month’s extension, and senior housing inspector Bill Lyon said he will probably grant it.

“If it poses no immediate structural problem, then I think I will go ahead and let him have another month. I am checking with my engineer,” Lyon said. “But if the structural engineer deems it necessary, we will insist that he get them out sooner.

“The hotel was not built with the structural strength of a library. The structural load is too heavy.”

Lyon said he will know more early next week.

The 86-year-old book collector, who said he spent seven years collecting the books, was injured July 13 when hardback volumes stacked in tall piles fell and pinned him to his bed for more than 11 hours in the largest earthquake yet to hit San Diego County. Cima was the only person injured in the quake.

The crashing books didn’t break any bones, but Cima was bruised and suffered what doctors said was either a “mild heart attack or a reaction to the accident” in the hospital after he was rescued, according to UCSD Medical Center spokeswoman Sheri Smith.

He was treated for lung congestion caused by the pressure of the books atop him. He left the Veterans Administration Hospital last week. UC San Diego Medical Center’s Dr. Mark Soll called his recovery extraordinary.

The accident aggravated already arthritic legs, and the small, freckled, rail-thin man with blue eyes and combed white hair now relies more heavily on his cane. But Cima said he is in perfect health. “I can still walk to the library,” he said.

Cima lives downtown to be near the San Diego Public Library and the used-book stores. Except for his indulgence in books, he lives austerely, with spare food and clothing in a run-down hotel room. His income comes from a veterans pension and Social Security. He enjoys freedom from responsibility, but the widower of 30 years said he is still lonely for his wife.

Cima hasn’t always lived simply--he once owned an estate and a small publishing company in New York, and a chain of movie theaters in Pennsylvania.

The son of an Italian immigrant, Cima learned to read in Italian before he went to school and fell in love with books while poring over romantic stories imported from Italy.

“Daddy had an Italian newspaper that he got in Philadelphia that would list books to send for in Italy. It was beautiful Italian romantic stories that made me love to read,” he said.

Cima said he bought his first set of books--a 51-volume set--after serving as an aerial gunner during World War I. He was working in Pennsylvania steel mills and saved enough money to buy the Harvard Classics.

“I got a letter from the publishers wanting to know why a steelworker wanted to read the classics,” Cima remembered.

“I said it is because I’m Italian.”

Cima’s second love was movies, and he pursued a dream of owning a movie theater in the 1920s. He leased his first theater in Aliquippa, Pa., in 1923 at age 23, and by 1929, he owned 18 Pennsylvania theaters.

He became a wealthy young man and said he was appointed the youngest director of an Aliquippa bank. Soon after, Cima recalled, he became the youngest Kiwanis club president in the United States.

His monies from the movie theaters launched a small publishing company in New York City. He recalled that the Cima Publishing Co. published the “Gone With the Wind Cookbook” and “Get in the Swim,” a book endorsed by Johnny Weissmuller that sold millions, he said.

The man who still attends Mass every Sunday said he is most proud of his publication of the multivolume compilation of early Christian writings, “The Writings of the Fathers of the Church.”

Cima finally retired in 1960, divided his Westchester County estate among his children and headed for Los Angeles. He said the weather attracted him to San Diego.

“I heard the weather was even nicer here,” he said.

Cima has moved into a room just down the hall from his “old room “ over Barney’s Liquor Store and Market on Martin Luther King Way but is eager to slip back to sleep in the book-filled corner room overlooking the former Market Street. The door to the old room, however, is still off its hinges, the window smashed and the books he accumulated during the seven years he lived there piled in a heap covering the floor.

Cima said he has collected about 16,000 hard-cover books since he moved to San Diego from Los Angeles about 10 years ago--those not in his room are in storage.

Although he is trying to sell the books, Cima won’t part with them one by one--he wants to sell the entire collection to one buyer.

“I am trying to sell the books to one party and to keep the book collection intact. They’re part of the family,” he said.

He demurred, however, when asked what steps he was taking to find a buyer.

Charles Valverde, who owns and manages Wahrenbrock’s Book House, a frequent Cima haunt for nearly a decade, said it would be an emotional shock to Cima if he sold the books.

“I didn’t know he was trying to sell the books,” Valverde said. “If his response is that nobody wants to buy them, I don’t think he truly wants to get rid of them.

“He was eclectic in his buying habits. He was shotgun in his approach--he covered all areas--except contemporary fiction was lesser in his collection. What appealed to him may not have sale value to a bookseller.

“I could probably find someone to buy the books. But when it came right down to parting with them, I think he would be quite emotionally upset.”

Valverde said the books in the hotel room are only “the tip of an iceberg.”

“I have helped him put books in his storage area. They’re in boxes, loose and stacked against the wall. He used to carry the books he bought in shopping bags--then as the collecting got more intense--in a two-wheeled cart.”

Cima had not been collecting as much in the last year because the pain in his legs made the 11-block walk to the store too difficult.

Cima had talked to Valverde about his dream to give his books to a library in Cima, Calif., but the plan was not feasible, and the idea was abandoned.

Cima said he will move the books into storage if he can’t sell them. Once they go, he will start collecting all over again--although not at the same rate. Not only do his legs prevent him from wandering through bookstores each morning before other collectors scoop up the latest shipment of used books, Cima doesn’t want to tempt fate again.

He knew he was taking a risk with the precarious stacks in his room, he said, but was surprised when the books buried him. He was just counting on his luck--his life had been accident-free until July 13.

“To be frank, I said to myself, ‘Well, it (the earthquake) may happen in the daytime, and I’ll be away. Or there would be an initial tremor, and I could get out.’ But that earthquake came full blast right off the bat. I had no chance,” he said.

“I thought I wouldn’t be caught in between--but I was covered with books.”

His four children, 17 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren, scattered in New York, New Jersey, Michigan and Arizona, he said, first heard the account of his accident through Associated Press wire stories.

“They thought it was a mistake,” he said. “I told them AP doesn’t make mistakes, but Daddy does.”