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Friday, October 25, 1996 Page: 1A
ANGELES — Edith Agnes Plumb’s willed donations to four medical
institutions is more than pennies from heaven.
Only now, a year after the Wilkes-Barre native’s death, has it been
revealed that she had a $107 million fortune and willed $90 million to the
Crippled Children’s Society, Orthopaedic Hospital, the UCLA School of Medicine
and the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn.
“Ms. Plumb’s contribution will help us continue to preserve Danny Thomas’s
dream that no child should die in the dawn of life,” said John Moses, chairman
of the national Board of Directors for the American Lebanese Syrian Associated
Charities/St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Moses, a Wilkes-Barre attorney, said he was surprised when he was notified
about the large contribution from Plumb, who moved to California in about
1935.
“This community’s ties to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital are long
and strong,” he said.
St. Jude treats children with catastrophic diseases with no regard to their
race, religion, or ability to pay, Moses said.
“Ms. Plumb’s memory will be blessed every time a child receives treatment
at St. Jude,” he said.
“She had plenty, but I never thought she was a multimillionaire,” said
Clara Hewitt, 89, a neighbor who lived across Chiquita Street from Plumb for
nearly 60 years. “She was nobody that acted as though she were rich.”
Most of Plumb’s fortune stemmed from her father’s investment more than 70
years ago in the Kellogg Co. shortly after the cereal manufacturer was formed.
The stock split and doubled over the years until her more than $1.3 million
shares were valued at more than $96 million, estate papers say.
Trisha Hensley of Orthopaedic Hospital said Plumb also had $8 million in
checking and savings accounts. The estate has paid out $8 million in taxes.
Each institution will receive $22.5 million — the largest single gifts to
St. Jude, Orthopaedic Hospital and the Crippled Children’s Society and the
second-largest for the UCLA medical school.
Plumb asked in her will that Orthopaedic Hospital use the money for
“medical expenses and procedures for needy children.” The Crippled Children’s
Society wants to use its share for needy children with birth defects. UCLA and
St. Jude were asked to underwrite medical research and UCLA was asked to help
poor people obtain organ transplants.
“We didn’t believe it at first,” said Marilyn Graves, president of the
70-year-old Crippled Children’s Society, which offers rehabilitation and
social services to children and adults with disabilities.
Plumb made only a few $1,000 gifts in the past, she said Thursday.
Eloise L. Helwig, president of the Orthopaedic Hospital Foundation, said
that since 1968 Plumb had sent in yearly contributions of $200 to $500.
Her multimillion-dollar donation “allows us to have an endowed fund to
continue taking care of our children for many, many years,” Helwig said.
“She didn’t put on fancy clothes and jewelry and go to the opera,” said
Paul Armond, 74, her longtime accountant and executor. “She was happy to sit
home with her cats and watch television.”
She lived quietly in a modest house on Chiquita Street, in a neighborhood
on the south side of the San Fernando Valley. The community is made up of
families and retirees.
Hewitt, a resident since 1935, recalled that Plumb and her ailing mother
moved there about two years later into the ranch-style house with several
bedrooms and a three-car garage. The mother died in 1958, Armond said.
Few neighbors saw much but the kitchen, although Hewitt remembered Plumb
had a 2,000-piece doll collection displayed in a living room cabinet.
“I would say she was basically a loner, a very kind person, but you didn’t
see too much of her. She spent the early times that I knew her taking care of
her mother,” Hewitt said. “Then, she became more and more isolated as her
arthritis and all got worse.”
But she was always generous. Hewitt said Plumb helped a young man pursue an
engineering career. In return, he did her yard work until she died on Oct. 21,
1995, from heart disease.
Plumb also bequeathed $2 million each to four couples whom she knew.
AP FILE PHOTO
This is a 1961 file photo of Agnes Plumb which appeared in the Los Angeles
Herald & Express. The 88-year-old woman, originally from Wilkes-Barre,
surprised everyone who knew her by leaving behind a $98 million estate when
she died a year ago.