The washerwoman’s gift of $150,000 to finance scholarships at the local college had taken much of her long and lonely life to save. Oseola McCarty made the gift as she felt her time creeping to a close, as worsening arthritis made it hard for her to work or sometimes even stand.
She had lived by herself since 1967, between rows of hanging clothes, a shy, stooped woman of 88 years who always had a lot to say, just no one to say it to in the quiet little house on Miller Street. Who else might she give her savings to, if not strangers?
But an odd thing happened, an unexpected thing. That unselfish gift–she did not even ask for so much as a brick to be dedicated in her name–has infused her life with color and experiences and delivered her from the isolation of her past.
Her generosity touched so many people, created such a fuss, that McCarty soon found herself flying all over the country, accepting humanitarian awards, meeting famous people and wearing high-heeled shoes.
Roberta Flack sang her a song, and so did Patti LaBelle. President Clinton had his picture taken with her. Harvard gave her an honorary degree. Whoopi Goldberg knelt at her feet. People, famous and ordinary, sought her out and called her “holy.” One man said she made him feel clean. She even made it to New York. Hotel maids there loved her, because she made her own bed.
“I tried to look at all the buildings,” McCarty said, “but my neck wasn’t long enough.”
It has been more than a year since she made her gift, practically everything she had, to the University of Southern Mississippi, a year she would not have believed if she had not watched it whirl past, from inside.
Before her gift, she had been out of Mississippi only once. She had never been on an airplane, or had room service, or been in a building so high she could almost see what the angels were doing.
At first she would not fly–it scared her too much–but so many people wanted her near and wanted to honor her that the train rides just took too long. Now she travels somewhere almost every week, the trips paid for by the organizations that want to honor her.
“I was half-scared,” McCarty said of her first flight. “But I never got so scared I didn’t want to look out and see.”
She has received so many awards she cannot remember them all and has been to so many places she cannot remember them either. “I just can’t explain all the exciting things,” she said. “I just can’t keep up.”
At the end of October it was Seattle, and another plaque, another dinner, another chance to stare down on the clouds with her traveling companion, Jewel Tucker, an irrepressible woman.
“The first time we flew,” Tucker said, “they put the tablecloth over the tray and she looked at me and said, `Jewel, you can eat on a plane?’ “
On that same flight, the plane made a steep turn and McCarty was a little frightened. “She said, `Jewel, I believe it’s going to turn over,’ ” said Tucker, the administrative secretary to the university’s president, Aubrey Lucas. “I told her, `Not with you on it, it’s not.’ “
Tucker, whom McCarty calls “my daughter,” has witnessed McCarty’s transformation since she gave her money to the university in the summer of 1995. It has been like watching a flower open. Nothing of value was lost in the transformation.
“I see her at the dinners in her French silk shoes,” Tucker said, “and I see her at night when she gets down on her knees to pray.”
McCarty still does not care even a little bit about material things. She has bought some nice things for herself with her Social Security check and the money she left herself after her donation, but only what she needs for appearances.
She lives in the same house she has lived in all her life, left to her by an uncle in 1947. She still turns on the air-conditioner only when company comes. She has a small, color-TV set now, in place of the tiny black-and-white one that got only one channel, but that hardly matters because she still does not watch television.
She did not trade in her raggedy Bible for a new one, but it has been rebound in leather to keep the pages in the proper order. It can be confusing, when Scripture is misaligned.
But the woman who comes to the door of the tiny house on the quiet street is different. In place of the sneakers with the toes cut out, she is wearing gray pumps. Her iron-gray hair is covered with a small, neat wig. She is dressed not in the faded work smock she used to wear, but in a neat, colorful dress, with little gold-colored buttons.
But the main difference, to people who knew her before all this happened, is her voice. Before, as reporters filed one by one before her and television trucks lined her street, she was so painfully shy that it was hard to get her to say more than a few words at a time.
“I’m braver now,” she said.
She almost chatters.
She is still quiet when she goes into a new city, as she stares up at the buildings, but that is because she is concentrating.
“I want to see,” she said. “I want to know.”
What she means is, she wants to remember.
It was not that she did not want to talk or like to talk, only that she was out of practice. “I didn’t have nobody to talk to,” she said.
She was reared in a house full of women, her grandmother, mother and aunt, and as they all fell sick over the years she cared for them. She dropped out of school when she was 8 and started working as a laundress.
Her grandmother died in 1944, her mother in 1964, and her aunt in 1967, leaving her alone. People took clothes to her to clean but seldom talked much to her. She had a dog named Dog, a pig named Hog and a cow named Hazel. She talked to them, sometimes.
“All those years,” Tucker said, “when other women were out jitter-bugging and finger-popping, she was working to take care of her family, walking five miles to the store. Well, now this is her turn to live. It’s like God said, `OK, baby, this is your time now.’ “
It all started to change on July 26, 1995, when she asked her bank to give her life savings away. She had spent little over the years, living so simply, amassing a small fortune a few one-dollar bills at a time.
Within weeks, every major news organization in the nation had interviewed her. She was on the front page of The New York Times and The Hattiesburg American. She was on “Good Morning, America,” was named one of Barbara Walters’ “10 Most Interesting People of 1995” and did a live, sit-down interview in her living room with “Tiempo Nuevo,” an Argentine TV show.
She was featured in Ebony, Jet, People, Guidepost and Glamour. She was on the BBC and MTV.
But she drew more than reporters out for a good story. People lined up to honor her. Harvard made her an honorary doctor of humane letters, and while she is not absolutely certain what that means, she is proud of it. The National Urban League made her a “Community Hero.” The National Institute of Social Sciences gave her a gold medal. She carried the Olympic torch–not far, but she carried it–and won the Wallenberg Humanitarian Award.
When Roberta Flack–McCarty still slips up and calls her Alberta–sang “Amazing Grace” to her at a National Urban League dinner in New York, she cried. Not just because of the place or the circumstances, but because she has always loved the song.
She receives the same attention closer to home. Her portrait hangs in the administration building at the University of Southern Mississippi, the first portrait of a black person to be displayed there.
She hobnobbed with the country’s social and entertainment elite, although those rich and powerful people approached her almost in awe. When asked what she remembered about Clinton, she just nodded her head, said he was nice and “looked just like his picture in the paper.” She saw Hillary Rodham Clinton twice, once at a dinner and again at “her house.”
She has been to New York five times, but she refuses to travel when her Social Security check is due in the mail. She does not want anything to happen to it.
There have been too many awards for her house to hold. She has her own section in the university library.
“I didn’t want nothing to happen to them,” she said. “I want the young people to see them, after I’m gone, so I want them to be taken care of.”
Artists and poets have been here, as have preachers and teachers, to draw on her strength and what they see as basic goodness.
At the university, other philanthropists have added more than $200,000 to her original endowment of $150,000, and it continues to grow, said Bill Pace, executive director of development at the University of Southern Mississippi Foundation. Next year, as many as six students–students from families who cannot afford the university’s $2,400 annual tuition–could be going to college because of her gift and other gifts she inspired.
Recently, an elderly woman sent in a $10 check, saying she wanted to be part of what McCarty had started. Others write to her or come to see her just because they want to be close to someone good, said people who work for the university or have spent time with her.
“She’s just different,” Pace said. “When you’re around her, you just feel better. You feel cleaner. The humility that little lady has is . . .” He stopped and shook his head.
Pat Reed, an administrative secretary at the university, knows why so many people are drawn to McCarty. They share in what everyone wants but so few have.
“Peace,” Reed said. “She just makes you feel good.”
McCarty chose Southern Mississippi for her gift because it was close to home, and part of the only world she had ever known.
With so many people clamoring for her attention and so little of her to go around, it was inevitable that someone would write a book about her. But instead of a biography, Longstreet Press of Atlanta compiled a collection of her sayings.
The 80-page book is titled “Simple Wisdom for Rich Living.” Most pages have just one paragraph, her opinions on faith, work, clean living, saving money and finding peace of mind.
Oseola McCarty on loneliness:
“Loneliness is a terrible, terrible thing. I used to get so blue, I would just cry about it. Now I get to humming a song or I recite the 23d Psalm. If you keep your mind occupied, Satan can’t attack you.”
On self-esteem:
“It seems pretty basic to me. If you want to feel proud of yourself, you’ve got to do things you can be proud of.”
On debt:
“Credit cards are OK for some people, but I wouldn’t go for one.”
On savings:
“The secret to building a fortune is compounding interest.”
On fear:
“I do have a few. I am afraid of the dark and I am afraid of snakes and lizards. I don’t enjoy taking fish off the hook. But I don’t let these things keep me from living.
“I am not afraid of dying. I am ready to go any time God calls me home. I am at peace with my life and my work. I don’t think I have any enemies.”
