Beloved literary legend's final chapter at Lake Worth Beach Library about to close
Book-themed party this weekend will honor city librarian Cindy Ansell, who retires Aug. 31 after 34 years working in the downtown stacks
THE FINAL CHAPTER of a storied Lake Worth Beach literary career is about to end.
After 34 years, Cindy Ansell, the sturdy spine of the Lake Worth Beach public library, will check out of the downtown stacks and head into a well-deserved retirement at the end of the month.
The city’s dedicated keeper of books will walk out the doors of the stately Mediterranean-revival civic structure at 15 North M St. on Aug. 31 for the last time as head librarian, a post she’s held since 2019 in a place that has been her home away from home since she was a kid.
Her final days will be page-turners, highlighted this weekend by a book-themed celebration of her career.
Here’s a cliff-notes version of what’s ahead:
On Saturday, Aug. 15, the nonprofit Friends of the Lake Worth Beach Library will host a combination farewell dinner and birthday party for Ansell, who turns 71 that day, at the Lake Worth Beach Casino Ballroom from 6-9 p.m. It’s open to the community. Tickets are $30 and can be purchased by clicking here.
The party will feature food and cocktails named after some of Ansell’s literary favorites, thanks to a fun tribute menu written by Friends board member Bunny Rivera, whose fiancee, Lilo’s Streetfood Chef Adam Toledo, is preparing the bites.
Guests will enjoy cocktails such as The Overdue Fine and The Banned Book Flight while munching on The Edgar Allan Poe-Tato, “Great Gatsby” lobster-style shrimp rolls, “Little Women” sweet potato skewers and other appetizers.
Later this month, the library host a farewell open house — organizers are still nailing down a date.
The City Commission will publicly recognize Ansell later this year.
There’s been talk of a permanent honor for her (sorry, no spoilers here).
“People say, ‘Oh, you must be counting down the days,’’’ said Ansell, the ninth librarian since the downtown building first opened its doors in 1941. “But I really love my job. It’s just time for me to give it to somebody else.’’
That somebody else will be David Larsen, who managed the Wilton Manors Public Library from 2022 to April 2026. Larsen, the Lake Worth Beach library’s first male head librarian, is not at all offended by the steady stream of well-wishers begging Ansell to stay.
Those sentiments are rooted in “the thousands of Lake Worth lives that Cindy has touched with her deep well of literary knowledge, her sparkling humor and her abiding affection for the people of Lake Worth Beach,’’ said longtime library patron Mary Lindsey.
Ansell's life has been defined by her patronage and service to the Lake Worth library, the oldest municipal public library in Palm Beach County still operating in its original building.
That includes 20 years as a dedicated volunteer and many days working alongside her parents. Her mother, Dorothy, started the Friends of the Lake Worth Library support group in 1988 and her father, Ernest, volunteered at the circulation desk after he retired.
“Service in pursuit of literacy is a precious tradition in her family,’’ said Lindsey, Friends’ current director.
And for Ansell, that tradition continued with an early plot twist. Once upon a time, she was terrified of the place.
Born at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Palm Beach in 1955, Cynthia Ann Ruth battled asthma as a child. To improve her health, she took up swimming and swam competitively.
She also dived into reading, influenced by her mother, a teacher at Belvedere Elementary School in West Palm Beach. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, little Cindy was a regular at the Lake Worth library’s summer reading program.
But her literary pursuits came with a psychological price.
Although the library building was still relatively new, Ansell remembers it as “dark and kind of smelly,’’ crammed with old books, a wall lined with taxidermy squirrels, eagles and other animal heads donated from the community.
“It was just creepy,’’ she recalled. “To get to the children’s section, which was in the back, I had to dash by all these weird animals. It scared the living daylight out of me.’’
She survived and tore through the stacks, devouring the Childhoods of Famous Americans series, Beverly Cleary books and young adult novels like “A Wrinkle in Time.’’
“I read my way through the children’s collection, including all the Nancy Drew books, and graduated to Agatha Christie,’’ she said.
Her second grade teacher at South Grade Elementary saw signs of a future librarian, writing in Cindy’s report that the little girl was “beginning to use reference material to locate additional information on subjects that are of great interest to her.’’
In 1965, when her father was promoted to manager of Rinker Materials in Fort Lauderdale, the family moved to Broward County. She graduated from Fort Lauderdale High School, went on to study medieval literature at the University of Richmond and library science at Florida State University.
She got married, started a family and worked at the Broward County Library System. She spent time working at the State Library of North Carolina in Raleigh. She worked internships at George Tech and the Library of Congress.
After her mother passed away, Ansell moved back to Lake Worth in 1991 and took a job in 1992 as principal of Trinity Christian Academy. That same year, she was appointed to the Lake Worth Library Advisory Board.
“Most of the board members were elderly and I had to pick them up and drive them to the library for the meetings. Sometimes I thought it would be easier to have the meetings in my car,’’ she said with a laugh.
Through her volunteer work, Ansell became a passionate library advocate, and she had a lot of fun doing it.
She dressed in cardboard costumes as books, along with other library volunteers, and walked in the city’s annual holiday parade. They hosted galas at the library with live music, dancing and catered dishes.
In 2012, she left Trinity Christian and took a part-time job at the Lake Worth Library. She was hired full-time in 2013 as children’s librarian. On Oct. 1, 2019, she was promoted to library manager, replacing the retiring Vickie Joslin.
By 2013, Ansell was well aware of social and cultural changes in the community, where many residents were struggling to learn English and make ends meet. The library turned into a phone charging station for people living on the street and was not being used the way it had when Ansell was a kid.
She came up with a strategy to both promote the library and turn disadvantaged residents into loyal patrons.
“We had to get the library to where the people are and then invite people to come to the library,’’ she said.
What she did next reads like a New York Times best-sellers list.
She took her popular storytimes readings on the road, setting up at places like laundry mats (“Books and Bubbles”), city-sponsored events, Farmworkers Council gatherings and Bridges locations hosted by the Children’s Services Council.
She hosted reading-themed tea parties around books like Alice in Wonderland, Winnie the Pooh and Mary Poppins. She launched Table Talk, a program that brings families together to practice conversational English and reading together over a meal.
She ramped up the library’s involvement with Lake Worth schools, increasing the library’s presence at school events and leading to more field trips to the downtown stacks.
She raised the library’s profile through her connections with the groups like the Community Redevelopment Agency, the Rotary and Kiwanis, Salvation Army and Literacy Coalition.
Armed with a state grant, she created an all-ages board game, Greetings from Lit City, designed to teach users about Lake Worth Beach landmarks.
In 2017, she launched BiblioArte, an arts and literacy festival connecting kids with Hispanic guest authors and artists.
“It has had a big impact on the kids,’’ Ansell said. “Yes, you want them to come to the library to read but more than that for kids and their parents to see somebody who came from Venezuela or Mexico and had to learn the language just like they did and became a successful author.’’
During the pandemic, she launched the Cindy Ansell YouTube channel, sharing 200 virtual storytime and neighborhood videos. She also embarked on an exhaustive re-organization of the 10,000-square-foot library, restoring the interior to its 1941 glory.
Ambitious? For some people, perhaps. But not for Ansell, a self-described “Tedhead.”
“That’s what they call people who are nuts about Teddy Roosevelt,’’ she said, noting a special bond she has felt with the 26th president of the United States who overcame asthma as a kid, as she did.
She shared two favorite T.R. quotes that have guided her career:
“Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‘em, ‘Certainly I can!’ Then get busy and find out how to do it.”
“Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”
That latter quote certainly applied to the generations of Lake Worth library supporters before Ansell was born.
The library started in 1912 — a year before the town was incorporated — when settlers John and Lucille McKissock opened up their living room at 11 South C Street to house donated books, many retrieved on bicycle rides to West Palm Beach.
A group of local women formed the Lake Worth Library Association and organized a book drive, publishing appeals for volumes in the local newspaper. Donations poured in from all over the United States, and the volumes quickly outgrew the couple’s home.
The library moved in 1916 to a dedicated room inside a clubhouse and in 1926 to City Hall. Residents that year decided it was time to build a permanent home and embarked on a 13-year mission to raise money.
After President Franklin Roosevelt vetoed a request for money to build the General Worth Memorial Library, folks raised cash through bake sales, bond sales and parties.
Designed by architect Edgar Wortman, the new library opened on Aug. 12, 1941 — 14 years and three days before Ansell was born. It cost $66,000, about $1.5 million today.
Today, thanks to the leadership of Ansell and her predecessors, the library has more than 50,000 books, nearly 26,000 cardholders and 410 programs attended by about 9,500 people. The library’s $1 million budget is double the amount when Ansell started as head librarian.
“Lake Worth has always been a small town,’’ said Ansell, known for giving away mangos from a tree in her College Park yard, “but it has never been small minded. I believe that the Library and our schools can take some of the credit for that.’’
In retirement, Ansell won’t completely check out. She’ll continue to visit the library — when she’s in town.
She and her husband Joe plan to travel. There will be visits to their four children and three grandchildren, to Major League Baseball parks (she subscribes to MLB.TV) and to literary landmarks around the United States.
One destination will be the Hudson River Valley and New England to see the homes of Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Fenimore Cooper, Rudyard Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson.
She’ll never have to travel far to visit her favorite literary location.
“This has been my library,’’ she said the other day from her second-floor office. “I’ve worked at other libraries and I did internships at the Library of Congress and Georgia Tech, but this has always been my library.’‘