ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, August 26, 1996 TAG: 9608260078
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NORTON
SOURCE: DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
MOST PEOPLE IN TOWN thought the Meador sisters were barely making ends meet. But the lifelong schoolteachers left a surprise for the Norton area.
During the Depression, Gladys and Irene Meador's father would see them off at the train station and give them each just $5 to spend for the entire semester at Farmville State Teachers College.
The lesson in frugality stayed with the sisters throughout their lives.
They never updated the black, rotary wall phone in their Victorian home. They never replaced the tiny black-and-white television that Gladys watched from a small stool in the living room after Irene went into a nursing home. They rarely bought clothes and always scrimped on groceries.
Lacy Meador directed a small bank that was bought out in the 1950s, so his daughters had some stock to supplement their salaries as schoolteachers. They invested wisely and when they died a month apart, they left more than $1 million each to this economically depressed coalfield community for college scholarships.
Barbara Muir, Norton's deputy treasurer, remembers Gladys as a tiny woman in her 80s who complained about the amount of her water bills when she strode to the payment counter at city hall.
Irene had Alzheimer's disease and was in a nursing home for decades, so most folks in town figured they were barely making ends meet.
``One of the things that was so ironic - when they died, one of the things listed was malnutrition,'' said Marty Hagy, a funeral home director.
Gladys died in November at age 86 and Irene, younger by a year, died in December.
The sisters, who never married, had no family except for six cousins, and only a handful of people came to their funerals.
But, oh, how they had a big surprise for Norton's residents.
Particularly city school Superintendent Bill Passan, who was so shocked by the letter describing the terms of Gladys' will that he had his secretary double-check the bottom line.
``I'm thinking, that's three zeroes, comma, three zeroes - hey, that's a million dollars,'' Passan recalled. ``I called Ms. [Linda] Wilson in and said, `Does this say $1 million?' I was stammering and stuttering.''
Another letter from Irene's estate was sent to Clinch Valley College bequeathing another $1 million, the largest private gift in the school's history.
Bank trustees of the estates sent the letters, but they contained no explanations from the sisters for the bequests.
The money bequeathed to Clinch Valley is being used to endow college scholarships, and the first round of recipients was announced Aug. 9.
One of the grants went to Muir's daughter, Heather Shifflett, who had been thinking of dropping out of Clinch Valley College because she was having a hard time financially. She works as a waitress in Norton, but her mother has four other children and moonlights with two other jobs in an area with 17 percent unemployment.
Muir now has a different perspective on Gladys Meador.
``You could tell she was tight, but she was saving her money for a purpose,'' Muir said. Her daughter, who hopes to become a chemical engineer, will get $2,000 a year as long as she maintains a 3.0 grade point average.
Richard Sowdon, whose son also received a scholarship to study engineering, said, ``Nobody dreamed they had amassed this kind of money.''
Jim Firebush, the Meadors' tax preparer, said Gladys was a savvy investor who, as far as he knew, never cashed in a share of stock in her life. ``She had a little notebook. She wrote everything down. She kept her checkbook straight to the penny.''
When Gladys graduated from Farmville State Teachers College (now Longwood College) in 1933, she made about $60 a month teaching fifth grade in Norton.
Hagy, the funeral home director who also is the School Board chairman and one of her former students, announced the bequest at city hall this summer.
``Miss Meador gave most of her life to educating students and even in death her desire and love to foster education will continue,'' Hagy said. The audience applauded, and Hagy vigorously rang the School Board bell in thanks.
Passan framed the local newspaper's story on the Meador bequests. It includes a picture of Gladys, a pretty woman with a short, bobbed hair style that she never changed.
Irene had a page-boy haircut and a different personality as well.
``Irene was a very kind and sweet person, the perfect person to teach the first grade,'' said Mary Ann Wilcher, their first cousin. ``Gladys was the tough one. She didn't get along with a lot of people.''
But Wilcher said she liked Gladys and has an insight into her personality.
Gladys dated several young men in college, she said, ``but nobody was ever good enough for her as far as her daddy was concerned.'' For the rest of her life, she was a primary caretaker - first for her ailing father and mother and then her sister. Wilcher suspects Gladys had secret dreams that were dashed by the turn of events, which made her bitter.
``When I think of Miss Meador,'' Hagy said of Gladys, ``I think of the color brown. Their house was brown. Her clothes were brown. Her hair was brown. There was nothing colorful about her.''
But Hagy said she had a soft, caring side and always had the schoolchildren in the back of her mind.
When she came to the funeral home to make arrangements for her sister, Gladys ``was writing the final chapters of her life,'' Hagy said. ``Her jaw quivered, the tears came, and she said, `We can do something to help kids around here.'''
LENGTH: Long : 102 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Gladys Meador, shown in an undated photo, and herby CNBsister, Irene, left $2 million for college scholarships.