diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 7059234a40b..0b96235e3ca 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -126,6 +126,7 @@ Bug fixes
 14. LUCENE-650: Fixed NPE in Locale specific String Sort when Document
     has no value.
     (Oliver Hutchison via Chris Hostetter)
+
     
 Optimizations
 
@@ -153,6 +154,9 @@ Optimizations
      in the presence of deleted docs or partially full segments as well as
      enabling future optimizations. (Ning Li, Yonik Seeley)
 
+  7. Lazy loaded fields unnecessarily retained an extra copy of loaded
+     String data.  (Yonik Seeley)
+
 Test Cases
   1. Added TestTermScorer.java (Grant Ingersoll)
 
diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/FieldsReader.java b/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/FieldsReader.java
index 992bd2cebce..1ec1d484c98 100644
--- a/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/FieldsReader.java
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/FieldsReader.java
@@ -265,9 +265,6 @@ final class FieldsReader {
   private class LazyField extends AbstractField implements Fieldable {
     private int toRead;
     private long pointer;
-    //internal buffer
-    private char[] chars;
-
 
     public LazyField(String name, Field.Store store, int toRead, long pointer) {
       super(name, store, Field.Index.NO, Field.TermVector.NO);
@@ -337,10 +334,9 @@ final class FieldsReader {
         try {
           localFieldsStream.seek(pointer);
           //read in chars b/c we already know the length we need to read
-          if (chars == null || toRead > chars.length)
-            chars = new char[toRead];
+          char[] chars = new char[toRead];
           localFieldsStream.readChars(chars, 0, toRead);
-          fieldsData = new String(chars, 0, toRead);//fieldsStream.readString();
+          fieldsData = new String(chars);
         } catch (IOException e) {
           throw new FieldReaderException(e);
         }