In 2014, Sylvia Bloom retired at 96 and died two years later. Her niece, Jane Lockshin, was the executor of her estate, which meant she had to go through the accounts.
There were more than $9 million in them, spread across three brokerage houses and 11 banks.
“I realized she had millions and she had never mentioned a word,” Lockshin told The New York Times. “I don’t think she thought it was anybody’s business but her own.”
Bloom had worked as a legal secretary at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton for 67 years. She started in 1947 as one of the first employees at what was then a new Wall Street firm. She was the daughter of Eastern European immigrants, grew up in Brooklyn, and earned her Hunter College degree at night while working days. She and her husband, Raymond Margolies, a firefighter who later taught school, lived in a rent-controlled apartment. He died in 2002, and Lockshin told the Times it’s “very possible” he never knew what his wife was worth either.
The way she built her fortune is almost entirely unique to her position.
“She was a secretary in an era when they ran their boss’ lives, including their personal investments,” Lockshin said. “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.”
She spent sixty-seven years doing that in a job nobody associates with wealth.
She never acted like she had such riches, either. Paul Hyams, an HR executive at the firm who became a friend, told the Times he once watched her come out of the subway and walk to the office through a blizzard. She was 96 at the time. Hyams said she had always regretted not going to law school.
Her will directed most of the estate toward scholarships for students who couldn’t otherwise pay for college. She did not name a specific organization. Lockshin, being the Henry Street Settlement board’s longtime treasurer, handled that part. She called the executive director, David Garza, and asked whether he was sitting down.
Henry Street got $6.24 million, the largest single gift from an individual in the settlement’s 125-year history. It became the Bloom-Margolies Scholarship Fund, administered through the organization’s Expanded Horizons College Success Program. Another $2 million was split between Hunter College (Bloom’s alma mater) and a second scholarship fund.
