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Fire Victim Leaves Millions To 'Shocked' Diabetes Group
Helene Whitlock Alley, whose brother had Type 1 diabetes, died in an Annapolis fire with her husband, Reuben E. Alley Jr.
(Family Photo)
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Type 1 diabetes, also called juvenile diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes, is a disorder in which the immune system attacks and destroys cells in the pancreas. Type 1 diabetes, which is the less prevalent form of the disease, affects about 2 million people and is usually diagnosed in childhood or adolescence.
The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's records, which date back to 1989, show that the Alleys had made 38 gifts totaling $27,488 to the foundation. The first donation was $100 in 1989, and the largest gift through the years was $5,000.
Getting a large bequest from a hidden millionaire such as Alley is a welcome surprise for nonprofit groups that solicit donations from a broad spectrum of contributors. About $22.91 billion in bequests were made in the United States in 2006, the most recent year for which information was available. That number is part of a record $295.02 billion in charitable donations made that year, according to the Giving USA Foundation.
Those donations include mega gifts from the very wealthy, but 65 percent of U.S. households with less than $100,000 annual income gave to charity, too, the foundation says. The millionaire-next-door benefactor comes from those households.
"The ingredients are they are accumulators," Berkowitz said. "They have a passionate interest in the cause. They don't have a need to provide for big families. They're generally not big philanthropists."
In 1998, Alley contacted the foundation about her plans to leave a bequest, probably for about $200,000. It wasn't until after she and her husband, who was also 88, died in March that Berkowitz learned in an e-mail from the couple's attorney that it would be "a significant bequest."
The foundation announced the bequest last week. About $300,000 of Alley's donation came indirectly from her husband's estate, estimated at $725,000. Alley's estate is believed to be valued at $8.5 million.
Alley was circumspect about the extent of her wealth even with her estate attorney, John Newell, who said that her stock holdings from Merck and other companies were documented by security certificates that "were very old."
"Mrs. Alley," he said, "when she met with me, she told me what she wanted me to know."
