Harvey and Virginia Kimmel have funded a six-figure matching grant to jump-start the expansion of the children’s section at the Delray Beach Public Library. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By Rich Pollack
Virginia and Harvey Kimmel were renting an apartment in downtown Delray Beach last year when they decided to go for a stroll and learn more about the community.
Along the way, they passed the Delray Beach Public Library.
“We decided to walk in one day,” Harvey Kimmel says. “We got to chatting with the people in the children’s department, and we asked ‘What is it you need?’ That’s when we found out they wanted to expand the children’s section.”
That conversation led the Kimmels to donate more than $5,000 for equipment, including tools kids can use with 3D printers to reshape plastic.
More importantly, that impromptu conversation also led the Kimmels to give a six-figure matching grant to jump-start the expansion of the children’s library section.
The timing of the Kimmels’ generous donation, Library Director Alan Kornblau says, couldn’t have been better.
“We had just started planning for the expansion of the children’s department when all of a sudden, like Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, here come Harvey and Virginia Kimmel,” he said.
The gift from the Virginia and Harvey Kimmel Family Grant Program, along with a matching $100,000 to be raised from the community, will go a long way toward helping the library grow the children’s area by 5,000 square feet. Once completed, it will include everything from shelves on wheels that can be moved to create more space, to a recording studio and a family reading area.
“The matching gift gives us an opportunity to go into the community and reach out to prospective new supporters who may not know about how incredible our library is,” said Nancy Dockerty, president of the library’s board of directors.
On the surface, the genesis of the gift from the Kimmels may appear serendipitous. The reality, however, is that chance had little to do with the Kimmels’ decision to support the Delray Beach Public Library, a nonprofit organization run by a board of directors.
Now permanent Delray Beach residents, the Kimmels have a proven track record of supporting education and arts — especially for children — in the communities they call home.
Longtime residents of Philadelphia and surrounding areas, they have been driving forces behind programs there that make it possible for children from underserved communities to do everything from seeing stage productions to going to the movies for just $1. They also have been strong supporters of a program that allows high school students in Philadelphia one year of free admission to the city’s top museums.
Harvey Kimmel — who ran a successful business buying troubled companies and bringing them back to prosperity — was a founder and board chairman of Dancing Classrooms Philadelphia, and the couple strongly supports the Philadelphia Young Playwrights program.
They are parents of two adult daughters, and in Michigan, where they have a summer home, the Kimmels support an arts assistance program in the public schools and more recently provided seed money for a children’s film festival.
Since moving into their Delray Beach home, with a view of the Intracoastal Waterway, the Kimmels, both 71, have increased their emphasis on helping children here, specifically through their donation to the library.
“This is our home now,” Virginia Kimmel says. “We love Delray Beach and we want it to have the best possibilities for the children.”
Virginia Kimmel’s dedication to helping children and supporting library programs traces its roots back to her childhood and her early professional career as a primary-school teacher working with inner-city kids in Chicago.
“I grew up with not much money and always felt comfortable and safe in the library,” she said. “I knew I could always go there and find a good book to read.”
With their gift to the library, the Kimmels hope to provide more children of Delray Beach with the same opportunity.
“This is our little attempt in the short term to give children of all ages a place to go and in the long term to grow into better citizens,” Harvey Kimmel said.
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