Late Learner Had No Trouble Saying Thanks

Roger Comi’s dyslexia didn’t get in the way of a successful business, even though he didn’t learn to read until he was in his 60s. In retirement, he was still having trouble writing, so he enrolled at Santa Ana College.

That was February 2001. Five months later he died of pneumonia at age 78.

Soon, faculty with the college’s disabled students program learned how great an impact they’d had on him. The Fountain Valley man bequeathed half his estate--or about $500,000--a gift five times greater than any in the college’s history.

“We’re still borderline shocked,” said Nilo Lipiz, dean of instruction and student services at the campus’ School of Continuing Education. “You never think of someone donating hundreds of thousands of dollars like this.”

Comi also left about $100,000 to the Westminster Senior Center, apparently because he enjoyed computer classes he took there. He gave the same amount to the Orange Senior Center, where no one remembers the man who ate lunch there while volunteering at a nearby hospital.

As for his estranged daughter, he left her nothing, said Bob Ault, a retiree Comi met at the Westminster center and named to oversee his estate.

The first check of more than $400,000 arrived in April, college officials said. They plan to use some of the windfall to give more room to the crowded disabled students program.

Comi was a private man and an impeccable dresser who told his story to Ault, whom he met about 21/2 years ago in a computer class at the center. Ault eventually tutored Comi at the latter’s home. Ault was surprised to learn that Comi had appointed him trustee of his estate, a position similar to an executor.

The son of Italian immigrants, Comi dropped out of school in the fifth grade, eventually working as a bartender and restaurant manager.

Inspired by ships in a bottle, he started selling kits so people could grow plants in a wine bottle. The business became a more traditional plant store, the Plant Hangout, and Comi set up shop in a North Hollywood storefront. He started another business, Greenery Interiors, leasing plants to businesses. Soon he owned the building.

In the 1980s, Comi sold the business and the building and moved to Orange County to be near his daughter. He had been divorced twice.

Comi showed up at Santa Ana College for the spring semester of 2001. The place struck a chord with him.

“He used to say, ‘I’ve been in so many classes, but at this one I feel real, real good, and real comfortable,’” said Onofre Murrillo Oropeza, a 28-year-old fellow student.

It wasn’t long before Comi went to Mary Stephens, a learning disability specialist, and talked of making her program a beneficiary of his trust.

He told Stephens he wasn’t talking about a small amount of money. She didn’t know what that meant.

“For our students in this area of town, even $1,000 is a lot of money,” she said in an interview this week.

When Comi talked to Lipiz about the donation, the dean figured he meant something in the $100 to $1,000 range.

How about a set of books, Lipiz asked? Comi said he had something more expensive in mind.

A computer?

Keep going.

A set of computers?

Anything more?

“That’s when I said almost jokingly, ‘You want to buy another classroom?’”

“That sounds more like what I can afford,” Comi told him.

Lipiz still didn’t quite believe him, but he gave him some paperwork and told him how much a bungalow would cost the college.

“He kept saying to me, ‘This is going to be a long time. I don’t plan on passing away soon,’” Lipiz said this week. “He made reference to wanting to learn a lot of things.”

Comi’s daughter, Susan Kalajian, 53, said she was shocked that she was not a beneficiary. She also said she consulted a lawyer about challenging his bequests, but he told her she didn’t have legal grounds.