❤️ Sylvia Bloom was “the epitome of selflessness”, empathy and humility #LessonsInLife #Inspiration #Hero 🏆
She never used the money on her self.
- “She attended public schools, including Hunter College, where she completed her degree at night while working days to make ends meet.”
- She retired at age 96. Working for the same company for 67 years.
- She married her husband, Raymond Margolies and kept her maiden name
- She and her husband lived in rent-controlled apartment
- She moved to a senior residence after retiring
- She used NYC transit her entire life until her death in 2016
- She never told anyone about her fortune. May not even her husband!
Even by the dizzying standards of New York City philanthropy, a recent $6.24 million donation to the Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side was a whopper — the largest single gift from an individual to the social service group in its 125-year history.
The Henry Street Settlement, on Montgomery Street, now serves more than 60,000 people and provides an array of services in addition to its education support, including health care programs and transitional housing.
Ms. Lockshin said an additional $2 million from Ms. Bloom’s bequest would be split between Hunter College and another scholarship fund to be announced.
It was not donated by some billionaire benefactor, but by a frugal legal secretary from Brooklyn who toiled for the same law firm for 67 years until she retired at age 96 and died not long afterward in 2016.
Her name was Sylvia Bloom and even her closest friends and relatives had no idea she had amassed a fortune over the decades. She did this by shrewdly observing the investments made by the lawyers she served.
“She was a secretary in an era when they ran their boss’s lives, including their personal investments,” recalled her niece Jane Lockshin.
“So when the boss would buy a stock, she would make the purchase for him, and then buy the same stock for herself, but in a smaller amount because she was on a secretary’s salary.”
In 1947 she joined a fledgling Wall Street law firm as one of its first employees. Over her 67 years with the firm, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, it grew to its current size, with more than 1,200 lawyers, as well as hundreds of staff members, of which Ms. Bloom was the longest tenured, said Paul Hyams, a human resources executive for the firm who became good friends with Ms. Bloom over his 35 years working there.
“She never talked money and she didn’t live the high life. She wasn’t showy and didn’t want to call attention to herself.”, Paul Hyams
On 9/11
Ms. Bloom was known for always taking the subway to work, even on the morning of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the World Trade Center, not far from the firm’s offices.
That day, Ms. Bloom, at 84, fled north and took refuge in a building before walking over the Brooklyn Bridge and taking a city bus — not a cab — home.
“She was a child of the Depression and she knew what it was like not to have money. She had great empathy for other people who were needy and wanted everybody to have a fair shake.”
R.I.P. #SylviaBloom #HonorHer
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