NEW HAVEN, Conn., June 26 (UPI) -- Loyal Yale alumni have been generous recently, giving the Connecticut university gifts ranging from a Rudyard Kipling collection to rare sapphires.
While financial gifts swell Yale's endowment, the others enrich its libraries and museums, The Hartford Courant reported. Often they represent decades of collecting and scholarship.
David Richards, a New York real estate lawyer, decided to give Yale's Beinecke Library his Kipling collection to mark his 40th reunion. The collection valued at $1.4 million includes first editions of the author's books, as well as Kipling-related tea sets, posters and even cigar boxes.
William Reese, a New Haven-based book dealer, celebrated his 30th reunion this year by giving his collection of Siegfried Sassoon works. Sassoon, a British officer during World War I, became celebrated for his anti-war poetry.
Another alumnus, who happens to be a gem dealer in New York, honored his reunion by giving several rare sapphires to the Peabody Museum of Natural History to be a centerpiece in a renovated mineral hall.
"We're not in a position to search for specimens of this caliber," said Jane Pickering, the museum's deputy director.
