36 years ago, Patti Smith had a bag of clothing stolen from her. In fact, her whole band’s truck — with everything they owned inside it, including $40,000 worth of musical equipment — was stolen while they were playing a gig at Chicago’s Aragon. This weekend, while discussing her new memoir M Train, at Dominican University, a woman named Doreen Bender stood up in the crowd, interrupted Patti’s reading, and handed over a bag full of the singer’s long lost clothing. Upon seeing the contents — a bandanna given to her by her late brother, the shirt she wore of the Rolling Stone cover, that Keith Richards T-shirt she always used to wear — Patti burst into tears, prompting the entire audience to follow suit. According to Chicago Tribune, a friend who worked for U-Haul at the time had given Doreen the items. “I just thought, ‘Oh my god, these are her clothes and they still have sweat on them,'” she told the Tribune. “The feeling of making your hero happy, it was a moment. It was the highlight of my life.”
Credits
Text Tish Weinstok
Photography via