Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 31, 1990 TAG: 9003310064
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRIS GLADDEN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Few of those who passed her on the streets of downtown Roanoke realized that she had contributed at least a million dollars to Virginia schools in her lifetime and would leave them millions more when she died.
Evelyn Fitts Thomas of Roanoke was as generous with her money as she was frugal in her personal life. Thomas, who died last month at 86, was known to turn envelopes inside out, retape them and mail them with used stamps.
Yet she left an estate estimated at $5.5 million - all of it to Virginia schools and charitable institutions with the Medical College of Virginia receiving the largest share.
Evelyn Thomas and her husband, Dr. Charles Thomas, who died in 1964, are the largest contributors in the Medical College of Virginia's history. David Bagby, executive vice president of the MCV Foundation, says their lifetime gifts and the bequest should total about $4 million.
The portrait of Thomas that her friends and acquaintances paint is one of a deeply complicated woman.
She was a shrewd investor who could talk finances with the canniest banker. Yet she carelessly carried thousands of dollars in bonds around in her purse or shopping bag. She refused to spend money on luxuries or even necessities for herself, yet she often took friends to lunch and more than once offered to pay their way on trips.
The daughter of a doctor, Thomas married another doctor who left her the estate upon which she continued to build her fortune.
His name was Charles Thomas, a 1903 graduate of the Medical College of Virginia. A country doctor who invested wisely, Charles Thomas gave the Medical College of Virginia $1 million in his lifetime. Evelyn Thomas continued the tradition after Thomas died in 1964.
Born in Patrick County in 1876, Charles Thomas went straight to medical school without a college degree - which 2 1 THOMAS Thomas was acceptable at the time. After completing his studies, he returned to Patrick County where he lived the life of a country doctor. In the early 1940s, he met Evelyn Fitts, who was living in Martinsville, and they married.
Though country doctors at that time seldom became rich, Thomas invested his money in the furniture industry and banks that were just getting off the ground. His choices gave him handsome returns.
But those who knew Evelyn Thomas say her knack with handling money was largely responsible for the size of the estate that she left.
"She had a mind like a steel trap. I would say she was brilliant," said Sovran Bank executive Doug Cruickshanks. "Through frugality and wise investing, she made a lot of money. I really ended up genuinely liking this woman. She was very vulnerable, but she was crafty."
Cruickshanks, an executive vice president in the bank's Richmond offices, remembers when he first met Evelyn Thomas. That was in the early 1980s, when Cruickshanks worked in Roanoke.
A graduate of Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Cruickshanks received a call from his alma mater. A woman named Evelyn Thomas had given Randolph-Macon a sizable donation. It had come out of the blue, and no one at the college knew who she was.
"Randolph-Macon called and said, `Would you, as our ambassador in Roanoke, thank the woman,' " Cruickshanks recalled.
He phoned to do so and also invited Evelyn Thomas to stop by his office, if she were ever downtown, and he would take her to lunch.
One day, Cruickshanks received a call from his secretary in the outer office: "There's a bag lady out here who says she has an appointment with you and I can't get rid of her."
But when the secretary mentioned that the woman's name was Evelyn Thomas, Cruickshanks immediately ordered her sent in.
The secretary's concerns were understandable. Thomas was wearing a man's tuxedo, several sizes too large, held together with pins. Like a bag lady, she was carrying a rumpled shopping bag - but instead of the refuse that bag ladies collect, it contained hundreds of thousands of dollars in bearer bonds.
Anyone - no identification required - can present such bonds to paying agents or issuers for the interest on them. Cruickshanks was horrified at the prospect of tiny Evelyn Thomas walking around the streets with such a huge sum of money. He persuaded her to take the bonds to her own bank and put them in a safe-deposit box.
And thus began a friendship.
Frances Trent was another close friend of Evelyn Thomas. They met in Floyd in the 1940s when Trent was an extension agent there. Thomas was an avid bridge player; she and Trent met through mutual friends who were also bridge players. Trent moved to Roanoke in 1959. Thomas moved to a stone house on Avenham Avenue shortly after her husband died in 1964 and the two resumed their friendship.
Trent calls her a good conversationalist and a well-read person who had visited every state but Michigan and wanted to at least set foot on Michigan soil before she died.
"I've never known anyone quite like Mrs. Thomas," Trent added fondly.
Thomas was independent, frequently walking several miles downtown and back. She lived by herself until a year or two before she died. Friends and a social worker finally persuaded her to accept nursing care.
Thomas acknowledged that she was a miser, Cruickshanks says. She refused to turn the heat on in her house, warming herself by burning in her fireplace sticks that she gathered along Avenham. Yet she would spend on others the money she so shrewdly accumulated.
Those who knew her say that Thomas didn't really consider herself the owner of her money; she saw herself as its caretaker.
A graduate of National Business College, Thomas felt that she should have continued her studies. She was happiest in the company of doctors and college officials and enjoyed the attention her donations brought her.
"She hesitated to spend a thing on herself," Trent said. "She would do without. She wanted boys and girls to have the education, which she really didn't have."
Thomas left a little more than $70,000 in actual cash bequests to charities. Ferrum College received the largest - $50,000.
The rest of the estate, more than $5 million, was divided into 50 equal shares. The Medical College of Virginia received 18 shares, Union Theological Seminary in Richmond 10 shares, Episcopal Theological Seminary in Alexandria 10 shares, Virginia Tech six shares, and Hampden-Sydney College and Randolph-Macon College three shares each.
Thomas, who had no children, left none of her money to individuals.
While colleges benefited from Evelyn Thomas' generosity, she benefited from the contact with the colleges. She relished social events and made friends with college presidents and development officers throughout the state.
"She played her wealth like a violin," said one former development officer.
"She established the roles. They knew about their roles as fund-raisers and she knew about the role of the philanthropist."
Much of her social life revolved around her contacts with colleges. Thomas loved going to formal dinners and to Tech football games though she cared little for the sport.
Last April, the Medical College of Virginia honored Thomas with an appreciation day. They provided a first-class dinner and gave her gifts. But the thing that delighted her most was a sign that said "Evelyn F. Thomas Appreciation Day - April 27, 1989." Thomas took the sign home and proudly placed it on her mantel, where it stayed until she died.
"She had a coin collection that she carried in an old suitcase, she pinned her money in her coat and she carried her clothes in a bag," Cyndi Young-Preston said. "She looked like a bag lady, but she carried herself like the queen of England. And she could pack away the food. After a couple of helpings, out would come the doggie bag.
"Other people would have been kinder to themselves. She could have bought out Thalhimers, but she wore shoes she bought at the Salvation Army with rubber bands around the soles."
Young-Preston worked as a writer in the development office at Virginia Tech, where her husband also worked. Like many of the people Thomas met through her philanthropy, they became friends with the generous but eccentric woman. They shared their Christmases with Thomas, who would typically take food home in her ever-present doggie bag. And they looked in on her out of concern after they left Tech.
Trent and Cruickshanks also looked after her as did Robert Bryant, a vice president in Sovran Bank's trust department.
"She was probably the most delightful customer I've had, and I've been in the trust department for 15 years," Bryant said.
Young-Preston was one of the people who attended the funeral for Evelyn Thomas in a small Floyd cemetery.
"We knew that we would see all of our friends from colleges around the state," Young-Preston said. "Most were swapping Mrs. T. stories. But all of the stories were swapped with the greatest of love."
by CNB