Two Libraries Get Gifts of $2M

Some 20 years ago, Lisa Winters, a librarian at the Allerton Public Library, Monticello, IL, helped former resident Max Hency research family history. That interaction may have inspired his $2 million bequest to the library, whose annual budget is less than $400,000.

On a rare return to his hometown, Hency asked Winters to find out more about his sibling's early death. She was unsuccessful in turning up any local news coverage but instead found information about his father, who lost several fingers in a blacksmithing accident.

A longtime reference librarian at the West Hartford Public Library, CT, Thomas Kilfoil, died in 2005 at 82, and left the library $2 million. (He worked until he was 79.) While library staffers said they didn't know how he amassed so much money, he clearly was frugal, walking a two-mile round-trip to work each day, according to the Hartford Courant. The money, reported WFSB-TV, will help with a new handicapped accessible reference desk, future renovations, a history room, and an internship for students interested in librarianship.

“It seems fitting to give something back to an institution that gave me so many happy and fulfilling years,” Kilfoil wrote in a letter to the library. Library director Pat Holloway commented, “[H]is exceptional gift has left us all in a state of semi-shock.“