Slyvia Bloom, a 96-year-old secretary, donated a fortune worth $8.24 million to education before dying in 2016, stunning many of the stash she quietly amassed, The New York Times reported.
Sylvia Bloom, who worked at the same law firm, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, for 67 years before retiring at 96, made a $6.24 million donation to the Henry Street Settlement, the largest single gift from an individual to the social service group in its 125-year history, the newspaper said. Another $2 million was designated to be split between Hunter College and another scholarship fund to be announced.
The Times said the secretary was so private about money she saved that not even her relatives and closest friends knew what she collected over the years. Her niece Jane Lockshin told the newspaper she made the money by following the investments of the attorneys she worked for.
"She was a secretary in an era when they ran their boss's lives, including their personal investments," Lockshin told the Times. "So when the boss would buy a stock, she would make the purchase for him, and then buy the same stock for herself, but in a smaller amount because she was on a secretary's salary."
In all, Bloom quietly built a $9 million fortune from three brokerage houses and 11 banks that was only revealed at the end of her life, Lockshin, the executor of Ms. Bloom's estate, told the Times.
"I realized she had millions and she had never mentioned a word," Lockshin told the Times. "I don't think she thought it was anybody's business but her own."
Lockshin, the treasurer of the Henry Street Settlement's board, called its executive director, David Garza to inform him of the windfall.
"We were all agape, just blown away," Garza said, according to the Times, adding that the money would endow the settlement's Expanded Horizons College Success Program.
Bloom's husband, Raymond Margolies, was a retired firefighter, schoolteacher and pharmacist before dying in 2002, the Times wrote.
Education has been a popular target for big-money donors. Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, for example, has issues millions in grants for education along with agricultural development, emergency relief, global libraries, urban poverty, and global health, The Independent reported.
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