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Boston
Public Library |
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Boston
Public Library Receives $6.8 Million from
Individual Donor Mayor Thomas M. Menino has announced that the Boston Public Library (BPL) has received a $6.8 million gift from the estate of Thomas R. Drey, Jr., a retired educator, author, psychologist, stock analyst and frequent library customer. It is the largest donation ever made to the library by an individual in the library's 152-year history. The money will be used to support the library's Kirstein Business Branch in downtown Boston. "The people of Boston are very grateful to Mr. Drey for his significant gift to the Boston Public Library," Mayor Thomas M. Menino said while announcing the donation. "Mr. Drey clearly valued the library's mission of lifelong learning. His generosity stemmed, in part, from his extensive use of the Boston Public Library from childhood well into retirement. He came here almost daily to learn about investing in the stock market. He then used his financial and investing acumen to turn a modest sum into a fortune." The $6.8 million was Mr. Drey's total estate. The money has been deposited into a fund designed to support the branch's active business service including expanding branch hours, purchasing additional computers and online databases, and continuing to increase its extensive collection of business periodicals and books. "We are excited, not only because of the magnitude of this gift, but because of the important statement it makes about the library's vibrancy and vitality," said Boston Public Library President Bernard A. Margolis. "Mr. Drey used the library everyday. He learned how to be a shrewd investor. This significant bequest is not only testimony to an individual's investment skills, but also to the knowledge base which he relied on here, which is free and available to everyone at the Boston Public Library." Mr. Drey was a lifelong resident of Dorchester. He graduated from Boston College High School in 1942 and Harvard College in 1946. Mr. Drey earned two master's degrees, one in education and one in psychology, but his interest in stocks and writing kept him focused on reporting about the stock market. Mr. Drey's father, Thomas R. Drey, Sr., was a reporter and city editor at the Boston Globe, covering famed Mayor, Governor and Congressman James Michael Curley. Mr. Drey's uncle, James Drey worked for the Boston Herald and as a part time press secretary to President Taft. It was James Drey who introduced his nephew, a high school student at the time, to the Boston Public Library's Kirstein Business Branch. Mr. Drey began using the branch extensively to research stocks and companies. In 1992, he wrote America's Growth Stocks and in 1994 America's 100 Best Growth Stocks, both of which he dedicated to his Uncle James. When Mr. Drey Sr. passed away, he left his son a modest inheritance. Mr. Drey put the knowledge he had gleamed from the Boston Public Library to work, invested the money in the stock market, and made a fortune. At the time of his death in December of 1997, Mr. Drey's estate totaled $6.8 million. Mr. Drey requested that his estate be left to the Boston Public Library's Kirstein Business Branch. The branch opened in the early days of the Great Depression, on May 7th, 1930. It was officially named the Edward Kirstein Memorial Library in honor of the late father of a Boston Public Library Trustee and Vice President of Filene's department store, Louis Kirstein. The Kirstein Business Branch was the first public business library in the country to be built as a gift of a businessman and the second library in the country to be built specifically as a public business library.
Prepared
by the Boston Public Library's Communications
Office. For more information about news, programs
and events at the BPL, call
617-859-2212 or send a message to
P.
A. d'Arbeloff,
Communications Officer. |
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