He Left His Heart in Bolivar, Missouri

A wealthy San Francisco investor, who likes to recall his mother’s admonition to never regard himself as better than anyone else, has given his economically depressed southern Missouri hometown a Christmas present that will last 114 years.

David Delarue, who left Bolivar, Mo., more than a quarter of a century ago and made a fortune in California, has created a $3-million charitable trust that will distribute $180,000 to $240,000 a year for 114 years to his hometown and to Polk County, where Bolivar is the county seat, and to area schools and agencies.

Times have been tough lately in Bolivar (rhymes with Oliver), population 6,000. A garment factory closed last April, throwing 250 people out of work. The farm crisis has also taken its toll on dairy farmers and cattle ranchers in the area, many of whom have had to sell land that had been in their families for generations and look for work 35 miles north in the city of Springfield.

“I remember when our church had a hard time finding 10 needy families,” Virginia Johnson, a former schoolmate of Delarue, said in a telephone interview. “This year, we’re passing out clothing to 400 families.”

The trust will begin distributing funds--drawn from annual interest--next July 1. Delarue made a one-time donation of $118,000 two months ago, then followed up by setting up the trust.

“I always knew I wanted to help ever since 1930 when I came to school wearing knickers and many of my classmates came in overalls and bare feet,” said Delarue, 61, a friendly, soft-spoken man with cobalt blue eyes, who was interviewed in his home overlooking San Francisco Bay. “My mother always said, ‘You may have advantages, but under the sight of God, you’re just the same as everyone else.’ ”

The times also made for a closeness within the community, Johnson recalled.

“We were a really close class because it was the 1940s, when you got a diploma and a draft notice at the same time,” Johnson said. “Even though David went to military school in Virginia his last year of high school, he was always one of us. He never tried to run things because he was wealthy.”

Although Delarue’s family had owned several department stores in the state since early 1900s, they “didn’t have big money by city standards,” Delarue recalled, and he was determined to make it on his own. Interrupting his education to join the armed services, from which he was discharged in 1946, Delarue went on to get a bachelor’s degree in business from Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Va., in 1950. Delarue said he planned to test his mettle in New York after graduating, but returned to Bolivar instead to help his father run the family department store when his mother became ill. Although his mother died in 1956, Delarue helped manage the store, which his father sold in 1968, for four more years until he moved to San Francisco at the age of 35.

For two years after arriving in San Francisco in 1960, he lived in a rooming house and used the bathroom down the hall.

‘My Father Was Horrified’

“My father was horrified at the way I was living, but I wouldn’t take any help,” Delarue said.

For nine years, Delarue worked in the research department of a brokerage firm, learning skills that he would eventually use to make a fortune in stocks. In 1969, he and two friends founded a research company that sold information about promising firms to brokerage houses.

“We’d buy stock ourselves in a company that looked good--before the public invested very much in it,” Delarue said. “That’s really how we made our money.”

When his father died in 1972, Delarue renewed contact with his classmates from the Bolivar High School class of 1943.

In creating the charitable trust, Delarue, a bachelor, earmarked 40% of the annual interest income for the six school districts, 40% for Polk County (population 20,000) and 20% for Bolivar. In 2100, the trust is to be dissolved, and Bolivar will receive the balance.

“Originally, I thought the thing to do would be to hire a firm to put together a resume on the town that would attract a major manufacturer,” Delarue said. “But then I realized that if the town got a national factory because of me and then lost it, it would all come back on me. That’s when I decided to put it on their shoulders.”

Delarue said he thinks that the improvements in the area’s school system and infrastructure will eventually attract industry.

Lure Small Factories

Bolivar Mayor Joe L. Lemmon will use some of the money in a drive to lure several small factories to the town. The town has already attracted a cookie factory, which employs about 20 people. A local software company has expanded its work force to 40 employees and is expected to employ 120 people by 1990, according to City Atty. Kerry Douglas.

“You’ve heard of Silicon Valley--well, we’re going to be Silicon Flats,” Lemmon said.

“It’s a blessing straight from heaven,” said Ruby Payne, director of the Polk County Community Center, an agency expected to receive an estimated $6,000 to $9,000 per year from the trust. Payne is personally acquainted with the area’s hardships because her husband had to sell their dairy farm, which had been in his family for four generations. “We couldn’t make a penny anymore.”

Losses like that of the Payne family are among the reasons why Delarue decided to establish the trust.

“I love California, but $3 million is nothing in San Francisco and Los Angeles,” he said. “If I find I have more money to give away, it’ll be to Missouri.

“This way, I get to help so many more people,” he said. “The only wish I have is that I could come back 114 years from now and see what they’ve done with the money.”