Ardmore couple opens hearts, books -- and more -- to neighborhood kids

The wood post that Margit Novack had someone drill into her frosty Ardmore lawn in April was supposed to be a small memorial to a son-in-law who died of cancer. A bright red kiosk stuffed with books for children to take and enjoy.

But Novack, 66, could not stop at simple. This had to be seen. It had to be used. She put out bubbles and a jumbo pink refill bottle. Sticker rolls and bookmarks, too. Colorful pinwheels to decorate. Games with cones and hoops for kids to play as they passed.

Kids gobbled it up. She started buying more stuff. And more. And more.

"I have spiders and fangs. See?" she said last week, thrusting her next anticipated batch of sidewalk swag, Halloween treats taken from basement shelves overflowing with the spoils of an intensifying obsession. "I have enough fangs to put out and say, 'Take some fangs!' "

Five months after planting a gesture toward healing, Novack's red-framed Little Free Library has not just brought comfort to her grieving family and widowed daughter. It has vanquished the suburban axiom: Get off my lawn!

It's been 10 years since Novack and husband Bill Wilkinsky emptied their nest in Lower Merion and moved into the child-filled 2900 block of Morris Road. But it was this little library that really made them feel connected to the people in their neighborhood.

"Now," she said, "people are waving at us more."

Novack is an irrepressibly can-do woman for whom aging in place is always on her mind. She runs a business, Moving Solutions, that helps older people thin their belongings before downsizing out of their lifelong homes. She and Bill, 72, often wonder: Do our own neighbors view us as feeble? Are we the social oddities on a block brimming with young families in twins and modest singles?

Because the block leads to a bustling playground at the top of a hill, Novack gamely "merchandized" the display, she says. The props and freebies are to entice captive children and parents as they amble toward the promised land of monkey bars and bright yellow slides.

"I see people from a few blocks around - people are often stopping and dropping off or picking up books," said Michael Kay, 38, a not-quite block captain and Drexel University employee who lives a few houses away with his wife and daughters, 5 and 8.

"She really thinks about the kids and wants them to have fun," Kay said of the passion-project manager. "I think it's very cute."

The Little Free Library idea came to Novack after reading that they had become a global phenomenon.

Novack's, however, sprang to life not from a pure desire to spread literacy, but from a deeply felt sense of loss.

A homemade placard dangling near the kiosk - one she made with a lamination machine - explains.

"It's always open, and there are no due dates!"

"Have a book you would like to share? Leave it in the library!"

At the bottom of the page is a somber coda.

"In Memory of Matt."

And then: "My son-in-law Matt was a dedicated teacher who loved children. Matt died Nov. 15, 2015. This library is in his honor."

Matthew David Lautenschlager was the college sweetheart and husband of Novack's daughter, Arwyn. They fell in love at Lock Haven University.

"I love how you can be a slob," he said to laughter as he spoke his portion of the pair's homemade wedding vows, "but how anal you are about how I load the dishwasher."

Raised in Honesdale, a small town north of Scranton, he became a teacher in a most foreign place to him: Philadelphia public schools. Strawberry Mansion High School, then Thomas Edison High, George Washington High, and Warren G. Harding Middle School.

"He had a heart of gold," Arwyn said.

Matt and Arwyn could not have children of their own. And so, when a former student from North Philadelphia asked for help - a young woman whom he had mentored for years in school and who had a difficult home life - the couple took her in when she was 19, after her first year at college.

For five years, until Matt died, she lived in their Collegeville home, calling Matt "Dad," and 38-year-old Arwyn "Mom."

To the children who stop to blow bubbles, to the child who walks away with the Harry Potter book simply because it's the fattest one there, Matt's story will never be known.

And that's OK. Because the frolicking, the smiles, the people who even pull up with cars to drop off books - that's enough. Matt would be pleased, his family said.

Within barely eight weeks, Matt was diagnosed with stomach cancer, was treated, moved back to his childhood home near Scranton, and told he would soon die. He was easygoing as more bad news piled onto already-bad news.

"I guess I'll see you on the other side," he said when doctors, toward the end, shared the grim news, Arwyn stoically recalled.

A calm and steady woman, Arwyn still goes to support groups. She is strong, she said, largely because of Matt's own fearlessness in the face of death.

In his final breathing moments, Arwyn recalled, he signaled for her to be strong.

"I told him I would be OK," she recalled. "I swear, he smiled when I told him that as he passed. I try to keep the promise every day."

Seeing the lending library every time she visits her mother has helped. Heading toward the front door, she glimpses it from the corner of her eye and feels something deeply soothing.

"It does my heart good."

mpanaritis@phillynews.com

215-854-2431

@Panaritism

(Update: This post has been updated to correct the spelling of Bill Wilkinsky)