Monday, June 02, 2025
41.0°F

Man who lived modestly leaves millions in donations

The Associated Press | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 10 years, 3 months AGO
by The Associated Press
| February 4, 2015 8:51 PM

BRATTLEBORO, Vt. (AP) — A man who sometimes held his coat together with safety pins and had a long-time habit of foraging for firewood also had a knack for picking stocks — a talent that became public after his death when he bequeathed $6 million to his local library and hospital.

The investments made by Ronald Read, a former gas station employee and janitor who died in June at age 92, “grew substantially” over the years, said his attorney Laurie Rowell.

Read, who was known for his flannel shirt and baseball cap, gave no hint of the size of his fortune.

“He was unbelievably frugal,” Rowell said Wednesday. When Read visited her office, “sometimes he parked so far away so he wouldn’t have to pay the meter.”

The bequest of $4.8 million to the Brattleboro Memorial Hospital and $1.2 million to the town’s Brooks Memorial Library were the largest each institution has ever received. Read also made a number of smaller bequests.

Besides cash, Read had an antique Edison phonograph with dozens of recording drums that he left to the Dummerston Historical Society, Rowell said.

“It’s really a beautiful machine,” said the society’s president, Muriel Taylor.

Read was born in the small town of Dummerston in 1921. He was the first in his family to graduate from high school, walking and hitchhiking about 4 miles each way from his home to school in Brattleboro. After military service during World War II, he returned to Brattleboro and worked at a service station for 25 years and then 17 years as a janitor at the local J.C. Penney.

In 1960, he married a woman he met at the service station. She died in 1970.

Stepson Phillip Brown, of Somersworth, New Hampshire, told the Brattleboro Reformer he visited Read every few months, more often as Read’s health declined. The only indication Brown had of Read’s investments was his regular reading of the Wall Street Journal.

“I was tremendously surprised,” Brown said of Read’s hidden wealth. “He was a hard worker, but I don’t think anybody had an idea that he was a multimillionaire.”

MORE IMPORTED STORIES

An unlikely millionaire
Coeur d'Alene Press | Updated 10 years, 3 months ago
Woman bequeaths $198,000 to library
Daily Inter-Lake | Updated 12 years, 10 months ago
Donor leaves library $198,000
Hungry Horse News | Updated 12 years, 9 months ago

ARTICLES BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

September 9, 2021 12:03 a.m.

The Latest: US helped family escape Afghanistan overland

WASHINGTON — The United States is confirming for the first time that it has helped a U.S. citizen and family members to escape Afghanistan through an overland route to a neighboring country.

September 8, 2021 12:03 a.m.

The Latest: US helped family escape Afghanistan overland

WASHINGTON — The United States is confirming for the first time that it has helped a U.S. citizen and family members to escape Afghanistan through an overland route to a neighboring country.

September 8, 2021 12:03 a.m.

The Latest: Top Republican says Taliban holding Americans

WASHINGTON — The top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee says some Americans who have been trying to get out of Afghanistan since the U.S. military left are sitting in airplanes at an airport ready to leave but the Taliban are not letting them take off.