In 2006, Anne Laird heard news which would change her life. The owner of the Town Book Store on East Broad Street was looking to sell the downtown landmark, which would cause Laird to lose the part time job she had been doing since the 1990s.

Sitting at home, Laird was lamenting the loss of the store, partially from the impact on her life, but also from the town losing a small independent book store. Laird's husband, Scott, noticed her talk about the closing of the store and encouraged her to take an unexpected leap and purchase the store herself.

"It was never my dream to own a book store," said Laird, who worked for Merck early in her career before become a stay at home mother.

Laird took the plunge and then immediately chose to move the store from it's longtime home near Barons across the street to the corner of East Broad and Elmer, in the extension of the original town library, built by Andrew Carnegie. The decision to move the store, the last independent book store in Union County, was done mainly because of the rising cost of rents in the existing location and partially because of a desire to have a more open light filled space in the new building.

Laird is the store's sixth owner and she said she has been using customer service as her main niche to keep business coming into the store when two Barnes and Noble sit five minutes in either direction in Springfield and Clark. While her in-store stock is smaller than the larger book sellers, she prides herself on being able to order almost any book and have it in the next day. She said Westfield's location near several book distributors allows her to promise quick turn around on orders. Outside of the orders, Laird and her staff continue to recommend books, which she said has proven popular with customers. The store also runs story times, children's programs and author signings from local authors.

"I feel it is a kind of a natural thing that Westfield could support this bookstore since 1934," she said. "It started in the middle of the Great Depression. Our main claim to fame is personal customer service."

Laird has continued the program which first brought her to work at the store. Previous owners had created a program to allow stay at home mothers to work part time at the store in hours designed to work at the store while their children were in school. Laird herself started working at the store once a week and then twice a week before buying it herself.

Laird said that between the costs of operating the store and paying her small staff, she will not become rich from owning the store. She said money is not what keeps her in charge of the business.

"Anyone who's owned the store has never made a living from it," Laird said. "I could not live in Westfield on this. I do it as a labor of love. I've never been a risk taker and this was the biggest risk leap off the cliff in my life."