Bookstore Owner Wallace Kuralt Dies

Wallace Kuralt, brother of the late CBS newsman Charles Kuralt and a former independent bookstore owner who waged a legal battle against national book chains, has died at age 64. Kuralt died Saturday while in Fort Myers Beach, Fla. He had been battling Merkel cell carcinoma, a skin cancer, for nearly two years, The News amp; Observer of Raleigh reported Tuesday. Kuralt, who owned the Intimate Bookshop in Chapel Hill for more than three decades, filed a lawsuit in federal court in 1998 seeking $38 million in damages from Barnes amp; Noble and Borders Books. He accused the national booksellers of cutting deals with publishers that unfairly created discounts unavailable to the Intimate and other small operations. Kuralt blamed the unfair competition for undermining his business, which at one point had grown into a nine-store regional chain in North Carolina and Atlanta. A judge in the Southern District of New York ruled in favor of the book chains Sept. 30. Kuralt's attorneys filed notice Oct. 29 that an appeal was planned. Wallace Hamilton Kuralt Jr. was born April 7, 1939, in Jacksonville to Wallace H. and Ina Kuralt. The family moved to the Charlotte area, where the elder Wallace was head of Mecklenburg County social services. Wallace Jr. earned a bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1960, served in the Army at Fort Benning, Ga., and then returned to Chapel Hill. Kuralt and his wife bought the Intimate, a fixture at the heart of the downtown Chapel Hill business district, in 1964. With its creaky wooden floors and shelves of books, the shop attracted people of all ages and interests. Children could visit and hear stories read by Kuralt, whose deep, melodious voice sounded much like his brother Charles'. "He really wanted to run good bookstores, and he really wanted it to be in the same terms as everybody else," said Barbara Svenson, who with her husband ran an Intimate in Charlotte for 28 years. "Wallace was a renaissance man. He was articulate and artistic and funny, very kind and very interested in people. He was a man who could do just about anything." But Kuralt's business was plagued by fire, legal and financial problems. He was forced to close store after store until the last Intimate shut its doors in Chapel Hill in March 1999.