UPDATE: Gold Beach Books has had to close down the giveaway after receiving thousands of requests for books by early Tuesday evening.

Teri Watkins Peterson of Portland watched the news and read stories of charitable giving during the coronavirus outbreak. The free meals to first responders particularly touched the Portland woman.

Then it hit Peterson. She called her three sisters, who co-own Gold Beach Books on the Southern Oregon coast, with an idea.

“We have books,” Peterson said. “We can give away books.”

Do they have books. More than 40,000 used books, plus new titles, in a bookstore sisters Teri, Traci, Tami and Toni inherited from their late brother, Ted Watkins, who claimed it was Oregon’s second largest used bookstore behind Powell’s.

The process is simple. Gold Beach Books has a list of book categories on its website. Select a genre and email the request to freebooks@goldbeachbooks.com. The store will select a book from that category and mail to you at no charge, to anyone in the country. The only restriction is one book per household.

“It was important to us that there were no strings attached,” Peterson said. “Sometimes people will ask, is this a scam? It’s not. We’re genuine in what we’re trying to do.”

Since starting the giveaway three weeks ago, the store has mailed several hundred books. Store manager Carolyn Trigueiro says she finds a book, wraps in brown paper, labels for mailing, then puts the day’s shipment into her car and drives a mile to the local post office.

Trigueiro says she’s taken as many as 60 free books to the post office. On average, it costs about $3.50 at book rate to ship each book, she said. Tuesday’s book offerings include “John Burroughs: An American Naturalist,” which went to Wisconsin, and a couple to Washington, “The Snail and the Whale” and “The Sanctuary Sparrow.”

The sisters, all living in the Portland area, have no deadline on when they might end the giveaway.

“We all agreed we’re going to do this,” Teri said. “We’re going to do it until it brings us to our knees.”

Teri believes what they’re doing would bring a smile to the face of their brother, whose passion was books. Retired before age 40 after working in the legal profession in Philadelphia, Ted Watkins returned to Oregon and began his quest to build a bookstore. The 10,000-square foot building took more than two years to build and fill with books. Gold Beach Books opened in 2003.

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Watkins eventually built an apartment above the bookstore and lived there for three years before dying of cancer in 2016.

“If he had his way, he would never sell any of his books,” Teri said.

At its height, Teri said her brother had at least 60,000 books in the two-story store. There were many more, because when the sisters took over the business, they found dozens of unopened boxes, full of books.

Teri says the sisters are not passionate about books like Ted, but for their brother, they love being able to continue the business for now. Since his death, they have learned about his myriad charitable gifts and generosity.

A book giveaway during a time when people could use a nice break?

“I suspect at first he would cringe at what his sisters were doing. But we are pretty sure he is looking down, smiling on us and saying that we are still driving him crazy,” Peterson said.

(Courtesy Teri Watkins Peterson)

-- Nick Daschel | ndaschel@oregonian.com | @nickdaschel

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