Retired Secretary Wills $18 Million to Hospital
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CHICAGO — A $15,000-a-year secretary who made a fortune in the stock market with guidance from her boss left $18 million to a children’s hospital upon her death, a hospital spokeswoman said Thursday.
Gladys Holm, who had no children of her own and no known surviving relatives when she died in June 1996 at age 86, bequeathed the money to Children’s Memorial Hospital for research.
It was the biggest gift in the hospital’s 115-year history, surpassing a $10-million donation from McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc in the late 1970s.
Holm retired in 1969 after 41 years as a secretary at Evanston-based Hospital Supply Co. Her boss and the firm’s founder, Foster McGaw, told her to invest any excess earnings in stocks and she obliged. “When he would buy 1,000 shares, she would buy 10,” Julie Pech, the hospital spokeswoman, said.
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