The Campaign for UB
Jonathan F. Reichert Fund to Support The Victor E. Reichert Robert Frost Collection Endowment
This fund helps maintain the Victor E. Reichert Robert Frost Collection in the Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, celebrating the work of the great American poet.
The Reichert Frost Collection features many signed and inscribed publications by Robert Frost — winner of a record four Pulitzer Prizes, and the most famous poet of his time. The collection includes a Frost manuscript, letters, photographs, audio recordings, and ephemera, as well as many Frost-related items from other critics.
The collection is named in honor of Victor E. Reichert, a former rabbi of the Rockdale Avenue Temple in Cincinnati, Ohio, who shared a long friendship with Frost. Through the years, Reichert invited Frost to present a sermon, and was also instrumental in awarding Frost an honorary Doctorate at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Their relationship is documented in Andrew Marks’s The Rabbi & the Poet.
Victor Reichert was an avid Frost collector, and his collection passed to his son Dr. Jonathan Reichert, Professor Emeritus from the UB Department of Physics, who donated it to the UB Poetry Collection, and established this fund.
