The Boatwright Memorial Library book heist of 1974

Bank’s story began innocently enough when he checked out a volume of Robert Frost’s Selected Poems from Boatwright Memorial Library and discovered an inscription signed by the poet himself on the title page (above). When a librarian informed him the book had been mistakenly placed in general circulation, Bank decided to investigate further. He found more rare volumes sitting unprotected on regular library shelves, including a signed 1928 first edition of Frost’s West Running Brook, John Banister Tabb’s Later Lyrics, and an 1868 edition of John Greenleaf Whittier’s Among the Hills and Other Poems.

Bank saw a cause and took it up. He checked several of them out and wrote to the library, declaring that since the library wasn’t, in his view, properly caring for them, “someone else will have to assume this responsibility.” That someone else was him, and the books’ new home would be his dormitory room.

The story caught fire. The Associated Press picked it up, and suddenly papers from The Washington Post to the Los Angeles Times to the Chicago Herald were reporting on the student who kidnapped books to save them. Virginia newspapers alone published 28 stories about the incident.

What Bank didn’t know was that the university was already planning a $3 million library addition, with construction starting that summer. Within a week, a satisfied Bank returned the books along with a $1,000 check for the library that an anonymous donor had sent him in response to the publicity. The library construction finished in 1976, creating, among other things, the Galvin Rare Book Room. Galvin has just been updated again and today contains 15,000 rare items, including the very books Bank checked out.