Devoted to Each Other, They Remembered School : Brothers Leave Gift for the Future

Edgar and Arthur Simionescu lived the simplest of lives in the most complex of times, quiet men in a quiet town measuring their wealth in their devotion to each other.

Few people noted the passing of Edgar and Arthur two years ago, three months apart, in the brown shingled house where they spent 90 years. They outlived almost everyone who ever knew them.

They might have faded away completely, side by side in Hackensack Cemetery, the fragments of their lives preserved only in bits of paper in the Bergen County Courthouse, but for the matter of their will, Hackensack High School and a pile of money.

That bit of paper turned the simple story of Edgar and Arthur into Hackensack legend.

The sons of a Romanian head waiter at a Wall Street restaurant arrived in Hackensack in 1896. The family moved to a large frame house on Sussex Street, not far from the site of the first Hackensack High School, built a year later for $12,000.

Edgar, the eldest, attended the school for a year in 1904. By the time his brother, Arthur, entered in 1909, the brick building was already bursting with students and plans were in the works for a new high school.

One Brother Graduates

Arthur left two years later, and Max, the family baby, was the only Simionescu to attend the new school completed in 1918 and the only brother to graduate.

Max became an accountant and married Kathleen Ryan, a girl he met while working summers at an uncle’s ice cream stand at the Connecticut shore.

Arthur was stricken with polio at age 17, and the paralysis left him wheelchair-bound for the rest of his life.

Edgar became a machinist and was drafted into the Army’s horse cavalry in World War I. He had served only a couple of months when the war ended, and he never again ventured far from the house on Sussex Street or from Arthur’s side.

For years, Edgar had Arthur and Arthur had his stamp collection, and they both had Max, who always called them “the boys” even though he was at least 10 years younger, and even after they were all over 70.

In the summer, Max and Kathleen invited the boys to their home for picnics. Edgar was the cut-up, the extrovert, always looking for attention. Arthur was more serious, more thoughtful.

“They were very close. Whatever Arthur said, Edgar went along,” said Matthew O’Connor, assistant vice president in the trust department at United Jersey Bank, who came to love the brothers like uncles. “I never heard one raise their voice to the other.”

The Undisturbed Life

They lived contentedly, undisturbed. Every day, Edgar helped his brother dress, eased him in and out of his wheelchair and assisted with his stamp orders. Edgar cooked their meals as long as he was able and maintained the house. Even into his 80s, he was fixing things, painting or repairing this or that. He didn’t believe in bringing in outsiders.

For years, they had a weekly poker game with another pair of brothers, plumbers. Dealer’s choice, nickel stakes.

They never watched television. All the news worth learning was in the newspaper, Edgar believed, and he would sit in his mother’s chair and read it aloud to Arthur, who couldn’t turn the pages. Or he’d lay the paper in front of Arthur, and turn the pages for him.

The city shifted and grew around them; public housing projects sprang up on the site of the Hackensack High School they had attended, and businesses and warehouses cropped up around their home. Their sister-in-law begged them to move, but they refused. The more Hackensack changed, the more Edgar and Arthur stayed the same.

“They were happy the way they lived,” O’Connor said. “To our standards, they probably lived frugal lives; to them, they did not. They had enough to eat, clothing, a roof over their heads. They paid their bills.”

Dignity Counts

Money meant little to the boys; dignity was everything. Arthur’s last wish was that Edgar, whose health and mind were deteriorating, never be placed in a nursing home.

Arthur died at 90, and on their doctor’s advice, Edgar was never told. But those around him were sure he sensed it. He died three months later, at 93.

They had some investments, stocks and bonds purchased years ago. Most of the certificates were so old they were handwritten, and some of the companies no longer existed, having long since been swallowed up by others.

They never changed securities. That was their philosophy. But the value of their investments changed radically in the last 10 years.

By the time Edgar and Arthur died, their estate was worth more than $1.5 million.

The money was left in trust for Hackensack High School, with direction that the $120,000 or so in annual interest be given in college scholarships to its students, based on need. Administrators hope to award the first batch this spring.