To say Bill Klimon likes books would be an understatement. He usually spends a few hours a week checking out garage sales, estate sales and thrift shops, where he picks up tomes about the lives of saints, Catholic apologetics, church history, and coffee table books featuring religious art and church architecture.
“I’ve always been a book guy,” said Klimon, an Ashburn attorney who has been a serious collector of first editions and other rare finds for more than 20 years. He says he has more than 5,000 volumes in his own collection, many related to histories of converts to the Catholic faith, including Father John Thayer, the first native New Englander to be ordained a priest. But he also likes to share.
“When I find something interesting, I like to put it where it belongs,” said Klimon, who for the past seven years has been bringing books to Trinity House Cafe in Leesburg. He brings “six or eight or 10 boxes every month or two. I find things everywhere,” he said.
The cafe, in a historic yellow house dating to the 1820s, is an initiative of the Trinity House Community, a nonprofit founded by Soren and Ever Johnson to inspire families to better live out their Catholic faith. And because great books are integral to a vibrant and faith-filled family culture, the cafe includes what Johnson calls an informal “apostolate of books,” supported by donors such as Klimon, the most prolific.
“His labor of love has blessed countless people,” Soren Johnson said, noting it’s an apostolate of serendipity: “Someone can just stroll in here and find a book that could change their life.”
Books by popular Christian authors are tucked in many corners around the house — C.S. Lewis and Tolkien in the entry hall, children’s books and saints in the main dining room, and biographies and histories stacked in neat piles on a wide central staircase, under a wall of Eastern Orthodox icons that give the space an ecumenical air. Paperbacks are $1 and hardbacks $2; there’s also a basket of free books on a bench near a side door leading to more seating in the yard.
Staples include classics by Dante, Dostoevsky, Sigrid Undset, Flannery O’Connor, G.K. Chesterton and Graham Greene, as well as Bibles, catechisms, copies of the Liturgy of the Hours, and writings and biographies of saints, from Augustine and Aquinas to Ignatius of Loyola and Mother Teresa. Low shelves hold large art books that are not for sale, but can be perused while lingering over a latte or a sandwich. “It gives you this ‘cultured Catholic living room’ feel,” said Johnson, who writes a column for the Catholic Herald.
Kathie Josey, a member of St. John the Apostle Church, three blocks from the cafe, finds the atmosphere warm and welcoming. “It’s like a balm to the soul just to stop in there. I’ve spent countless hours there, and I can’t leave without a stack of books,” she said.
More than 20,000 customers pass through the cafe each year, Johnson said, and although one of his goals is to share the faith, “we want to lead with beauty, not apologetics. The experience of books adds such a beautiful dimension to that.”
Klimon, a member of Holy Transfiguration Melkite Greek Catholic Church in McLean, agrees. “I think aesthetics is a huge way in (to faith) for people,” he said.
Austin Pieters of Leesburg has a shelf full of books he found at the cafe, from C.S. Lewis to biographies of Pope John Paul II and Padre Pio. “At times it seems to be a treasure trove. Why would I go anywhere else when I can support something local and Catholic, and get four books for $4?” he asked.
Pieters, a convert to Catholicism, has found more than books at the cafe — he also met his fiancee, Katherine Stohlman, there. Their wedding will be Oct. 1, which in addition to being the cafe’s eighth anniversary, is the feast day of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, whose autobiography, “The Story of a Soul,” they’re currently reading together. They found a copy at the cafe, of course.
Although some feared that the digital publishing revolution would mean the end of such serendipitous discoveries, e-books still make up only about 20 percent of book sales, and physical books don’t seem poised to disappear any time soon.
“There have been lots of predictions about the death of books, but it hasn’t happened,” Klimon said.
Johnson said he’s heard over the years “from so many — Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and those of other faiths or no faith — that they’ve discovered a book at Trinity House that touched them and either deepened their faith or allowed them to take a step closer to Our Lord.”
