On Thursday, longtime Tattered Cover owner Joyce Meskis passed away at her home, surrounded by family, according to a social media post from the independent bookstore chain.
Meskis was the shop's second and longest-standing owner, running Tattered Cover from 1974 until she sold it in 2015.
At the shop's founding, "Denver was a very different place then, and after her momentous acquisition, the store grew as Denver did, eventually becoming one of the largest and most revered bookstores in America," Tattered Cover posted online.
Meskis set the shop on the trajectory of growth that continues today.
In her years at the helm, the store grew into a four-story building in Cherry Creek that rose alongside major changes in that neighborhood. In 2006, she closed the beloved Cherry Creek store and opened another branch near York St. and Colfax Ave. that is still a Denver staple.
Before LoDo was booming, Meskis took a risk in 1994 and opened her long-running downtown branch. The success of her business helped make a case that LoDo could be a home for thriving small businesses after downtown was gutted by the oil bust of the 1980s.
Over the years, Meskis experimented with what a bookstore could be, opening coffee shops, a restaurant, and hosting live events. The store became a hangout and a model for other independent bookshops around the country as more than a place to browse and buy. Tattered Cover created a community.
"She came from an era when there was still a [commitment to] experiment," said longtime manager Derek Holland last year. "I'm not sure it's a social experiment, but it's not far from that. She wondered what we could do together... She saw this as a gathering of people making a difference."
Meskis will be remembered as a champion of the First Amendment.
Last year, for a story marking 50 years of Tattered Cover's growth and turbulence amid shifts in leadership, staff member Zia Klamm recalled training sessions in which Meskis would educate staff on the store's philosophy when it came to limiting what customers wanted to read. If a depressed-looking person came into the store looking for a book about how to commit suicide, staff was instructed not to interfere with the person's literary pick. Children looking to buy a book had no limits in their selections. Censorship of all forms was banned.
Over the years, Meskis defended freedom of speech in two Colorado Supreme Court cases, one challenging a state law that criminalized selling sexually explicit material to young people and displaying such material in shops and another combatting a Patriot Act-era government attempt to monitor the books shoppers bought and search sales records without a judge's ruling.
While she was committed to a love of literature and freedom of ideas -- sometimes upsetting people in the community who wanted Tattered Cover to limit what it sold -- she was more than an idealist. She was a fiscally minded entrepreneur who took one of many small '70s bookstores and laid the groundwork for a thriving business with a national reputation.
"Joyce is the reason why we are all able to call Tattered Cover home," Tattered Cover posted to social media. "Joyce was a literary lioness that evolved our industry in a way that few others had done before her."
On the Tattered Cover home page, the company said "We are currently coming up with ways to honor Joyce and her global legacy and will keep you apprised of any new information."
