The Friends Half-Dozen

KENNETH A. LOHF

^T the Council meeting of the Friends of the Libraries on
.May 10, 1966, the chairman Hugh J. Kelly announced
that fellow member Henry Rogers Benjamin had pro¬
posed the establishment of an endowment, the income from which
would be used to acquire important first editions and manuscripts
for the Rare Book and Manuscript Library. It had been the prac¬
tice of the Council over the vcars to allot ftmtls for individual im¬
portant purchases, but Mr. Benjamin's proposal would place this
important objective of the Friends on a permanent and continu¬
ing basis. To encourage and hasten the successful completion of
the project's funding, iMr. Benjamin proposed to donate an initial
grant if a matching amount could be raised from other donors and
if the Council agreed to a contribution from the Friends operating
account. All of iVIr. Benjamin's suggestions became realities by the
end of 1966, due not only to his and the Council's actions, but also
to immediate responses from Mr. and Mrs. Robert Halsband, Mrs.
Donald F. Hyde, .Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Kelly, Mr. Aaron Rabino-
witz, Mr. Alfred Baer, Mrs. Franz Stone and Mr. Norman Strouse,
all of whom made generous individual contributions. The Council
further recommended that the organization continue to make an¬
nual deposits from the operating account into the endowment until
a total of Si00,000 was reached. A recent transfer from the operat¬
ing account and a bequest of $5,000 from the late Ellen .Moers
jVIayer have enabled the Fund to reach this long-term goal during
the early months of 1980.

A\'ithin the first few years of the establishment of the Fund the
income generated was sufficient to permit the acquisitions of
important editions lacking from the collections; Cervantes, The
History of Don-Quichote, London, 1620; Samuel T. Coleridge,