Frugal Vermonter donates estate worth $8M

Michael Winter | USA TODAY

By all accounts, Ronald Read was a frugal, hardworking man — quiet, private, unassuming, thrifty. A life-long Vermonter, he didn't spend money if he didn't have to, hated to waste anything, worked until age 76, cut and gathered his own firewood past 90.

When he died in June 2014, at 92, a widower for more than 40 years, it turned out he was something else: rich.

The high-school graduate who worked at a Brattleboro gas station for 25 years and then as a store janitor for 17 years — retirement didn't suit him — was also a keen investor who followed Wall Street daily. Read's estate included stock holdings and property worth more than $8 million.

Read, a native of tiny Dummerston, bequeathed most of it to Brattleboro's main hospital and library.

"People were stunned that he had that much money," Ruth Marx, of Dummerston, told the Brattleboro Reformer. "I bought some old fence wiring from him once because I thought he could use the money."

She also once knitted him a hat to help him get through winter.

Turns out the World War II vet in the flannel shirt was getting along just fine.

"He had two life-long hobbies: investing and cutting wood," said Read's attorney, Laurie Rowell, noting his garage full of stacked firewood when he died.

She told the Associated Press that when Read went to her office, "sometimes he parked so far away so he wouldn't have to pay the meter."

"He was unbelievably frugal," Rowell said Wednesday.

Read's Yankee thriftiness paid off for the Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, which received $4.8 million, and the Brooks Memorial Library, which got $1.2 million. Both bequests were the largest ever for the institutions. He also made several smaller donations.

Phillip Brown said the only hint of his stepfather's interest in the stock market was his habit of reading The Wall Street Journal.

"I was tremendously surprised," said Brown, who traveled every few months from New Hampshire as Read's health declined. "He was a hard worker, but I don't think anybody had an idea that he was a multimillionaire."