“When Jay Dantry closed Jay’s Book Stall in 2008, Elsie Hillman, the doyenne of Western Pennsylvania’s Republican Party, threw a party for him at Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland.
Dantry’s reputation as man of letters was so pervasive that Hillman was able to convince Tina Brown, the former editor Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, to come and pay tribute to the retiring bookseller.
‘She was not then aware of his stature,’ said Dantry’s longtime partner, artist Harry Schwalb. ‘But she still came.’
If Brown was oblivious to Dantry’s standing, she no doubt left the party with a grasp of the bookseller’s influence in Western Pennsylvania, and beyond…”
Longtime book store owner and literary guru Jay Dantry dies https://t.co/beLxl3WMNJ pic.twitter.com/xl0eMvYcAa
— TribLIVE.com (@TribLIVE) April 17, 2016