Frugal Cleary Gottlieb secretary who invested in stocks leaves $8.2M to charities
Longtime Cleary Gottlieb secretary Sylvia Bloom, who died soon after her retirement at age 96, made some smart stock picks during her lifetime.
Bloom had accumulated more than $9 million when she died in 2016, and she left $8.2 million to charities to establish scholarships for disadvantaged students, according to the New York Times. Bloom “joins the ranks of unassuming and magnanimous millionaires next door, who have died with fortunes far larger than their lifestyles ever would have suggested,” the Times reports.
Bloom’s niece, Jane Lockshin, is the executor of Bloom’s estate. She said no one realized Bloom had accumulated so much money. She lived in a rent-controlled apartment with her husband, who had worked as a firefighter, a schoolteacher and a pharmacist before his death in 2002. She took public transit to work and lived modestly, according to Paul Hyams, a human resources executive at the law firm.
So how did she make so much money? Lockshin told the Times that Bloom was a secretary at a time when secretaries handled personal details for their bosses, and in the case of Bloom, her work included purchasing stock for her boss. “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,” Lockshin said.
Bloom was one of the first employees at Cleary Gottlieb when she began work there in 1947. In a Times interview, Hyams recalled seeing Bloom at age 96 emerging from the subway to head to work in the middle of a snowstorm.
Hyams asked Bloom what she was doing here. Her reply: “Why, where should I be?”
