After 36 years, Patti Smith has been reunited with a number of stolen possessions that were taken from her tour truck in Chicago in 1979.
According to The Chicago Tribune, Smith was reading from her new memoir “M Train” at Dominican University in Illinois when she was approached by a woman named Doreen Bender.
“A woman stood up and told Patti that she had a bag of clothes that belonged to her 40 years ago and would like to return it. Smith looked totally confused, but asked the person to come up to the stage and hand her the bag. Patti looked inside and just froze,” said one eye witness.
The missing items also included a gauzy shirt Smith wore on Rolling Stone’s 1978 cover, a Keith Richards t-shirt and a remembrance cloth given to the singer from her late brother and road manager Tom Smith, who died in 1994. Bender said an unnamed male friend, who worked for U-Haul at the time, gave her and her roommate Smith’s missing possessions decades ago, which they divided between them.
“I just thought, ‘Oh my God, these are her clothes and they still have sweat on them,’” Bender told the Tribune. She added: “The feeling of making your hero happy, it was a moment. It was the highlight of my life.”
