In 1968, a man who would go on to co-found Starbucks checked out a book on relativity by Albert Einstein from the Port Townsend Public Library. 

Fifty-seven years later, the long overdue book is back on the library’s shelf after 82-year-old Gordon Bowker, the book borrower, arranged for it to be returned earlier this month. 

Jonas Myers, a Port Townsend resident and longtime family friend of Bowker, returned the book to the library on March 14. 

“When [Jonas] moved to Port Townsend, he spent a few nights at my house and so I pulled the book out and just said this is what I want to do, will you help me out,” Bowker said. “So he did.” 

Myers told library staff he believed the book was “weighing on [Bowker’s] conscience” and that he had been looking forward to returning it. 

When the book was borrowed, fines for overdue titles were a dime a day, which would mean Bowker theoretically owes about $2,080.50. Luckily for him, the library scrapped late fines in 2018. 

The book was in Bowker’s possession as he slowly but surely became a Seattle icon. He and two friends — Jerry Baldwin and Zev Siegl — founded Starbucks in 1970 before selling it to Howard Schultz years later.

Bowker went on to co-found a marketing and advertising firm best known for the Rainier Beer advertisements in the ‘70s and starting Redhook Brewing Co., one of Seattle’s first microbreweries. 

For decades the book sat stuck in time on a bookshelf in Bowker’s Seattle home in the Magnolia neighborhood. He said he had every intention of returning it to its rightful owner and paying whatever fine had amassed. 

“I thought, you know, you don’t just take a book from a library and never give it back,” Bowker said. “But that’s actually exactly what I did.” 

Bowker first visited Port Townsend in 1966, and spent the summer of 1968 working as a recreational counselor for the Juvenile Diagnostic and Treatment Center at Fort Worden. He lived in the basement of the Tides Inn on Water Street. 

“Port Townsend in those days was, it looked the same, but it was really quiet. There was nothing happening at all as far as I could tell,” he said.

“But it was a great place to be, especially because we didn’t have any money. And by the end of the summer, I think I had checked out the book, and somehow, it got packed up and came back to Seattle with me.” 

At the time, 25-year-old Bowker was interested in relativity and quantum theory, reading Einstein, Heisenberg and Bohr, but “nothing came of it,” he said. While he didn’t recall any life lessons or major themes learned from the book, he said it has always been on his mind. 

Bowker is retired for the most part and said while he isn’t a serious reader and oftentimes prefers movies, he does enjoy vintage travel books and espionage novels. 

“This is a dream story for a library to have a book returned in great condition after a 57-year-checkout — a year before we landed a man on the moon!” wrote Melody Sky Weaver, the city’s director of community services, in an email to The Leader. “We are so grateful to have the book returned in great condition and well cared for by the patron.” It will be added back to the library collection to be checked out by anyone interested in Einstein’s theory of relativity. 

“That is the happiest ending for a library book,” Weaver wrote, “to continue to be available for the community and read for many more years to come.” 

Bowker, adamant about paying the estimated fine, is working with the library to make that happen by way of donation, and will be back in town this summer to attend Myers’ wedding.