Another millionaire out of nowhere

James Ebbert never came off as the town tycoon.

Tall, modest and affable, the retired Quakertown businessman lived comfortably but frugally - always repairing what others might replace, ever insistent on senior-citizen discounts.

Only a select few knew the extent of Ebbert's wealth, let alone his intentions for it.

Both have proved eye-popping.

Ebbert, who died in December at 90, left an estate of more than $10 million, most of it to organizations in or near his beloved Bucks County borough of Quakertown.

"Uncle Jim told me years ago, 'We made it here in Quakertown; it'll stay here in Quakertown,' " said his niece Susan Ebbert Wambaugh, of Berks County.

Ebbert left $1 million to St. Luke's Quakertown Hospital, the largest bequest in its history.

Another $1 million was split equally between Millersville University, where Ebbert was president of the Class of 1941, and Temple University, alma mater of his late wife, Martha. Both bequests will be used to establish scholarships for education majors.

The rest will be divided among three churches, two private schools, a local fire company, the local YMCA, the Salvation Army, the Shriners Hospital for Children in Philadelphia, and four elderly relatives. Ebbert and his wife had no children.

The extent of his wealth and generosity caught even his sister by surprise.

"I almost fell off my seat when they told me," said 93-year-old Louise Little of Gettysburg, Pa., who received $200,000. "It's amazing what he stacked up."

The charity displayed in his will, she added, "tells a lot about him."

Ebbert's estate is at least the third out-of-nowhere windfall to land among Bucks County organizations in recent years.

In 2002, Frederick Holzwarth Jr., 73, a quiet former high school math teacher from Richboro, left nearly $1.6 million to the Bucks County Civil War Round Table, a discussion group of amateur historians. As per his instructions, the group bought a house in Doylestown for a museum.

In 2005, retired physicist and amateur painter William Denison Williams, 95, left $7 million to the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown - not far from his two-bedroom apartment in a retirement home.

Expect to see such surprises more often, said Arthur C. Brooks, a Syracuse University professor who has studied and written extensively about philanthropic behavior.

"It has a lot to do with the wealth that has been created in the past half-century," he said. "This would have been kind of a weird thing a few decades ago, but we're seeing more people dying with a lot of cash."

And a lot of that cash has been going to charity, Brooks said. "This will be a much more common story in the years to come," he predicted.

Ebbert's story began on a 200-acre grain and dairy farm near Biglerville in Adams County. He was the sixth of seven children born to a sharecropper.

"Jim was a very hard worker," recalled his brother Daniel, of Berks County. "He was about the only one who could break in and train the new horses, so every morning before school he got out and worked them."

Standing 6-foot-5, Ebbert was an avid basketball and bass fiddle player. He borrowed to get through Millersville, where the 1941 yearbook noted his "boundless energy" and "executive qualities."

He soon found work as a high school math and industrial-arts teacher.

"He'd heard about an opening in a place called Quakertown," recalled retired bank president Philip Miller, his closest friend. "He said, 'Where is Quakertown?' "

Too tall and colorblind, Ebbert nonetheless fudged his way into the Army Air Corps, where he served in World War II as a celestial-navigation instructor.

Soon after, he returned to Quakertown and was grounded by marriage. Martha Moyer Ebbert, a fellow teacher, refused to fly, so they traveled by car and train throughout their 53-year marriage.

In 1946, Ebbert left teaching to purchase K&L Co. Inc., where he built his fortune on sales of lumber, coal and sand - along with smart investments and frugal ways.

"When I dined with him," Miller said, "he always took advantage of the 10 percent senior-citizen discount."

Ebbert also threw himself into civic life. A founder of the Quakertown Little League, he immersed himself in youth sports and served for decades as a director of Quakertown National Bank, a board member of the Quakertown Hospital Association, and treasurer of the Quakertown School Authority.

Among his few indulgences were twice-a-week golf outings and regular breakfasts at a diner with a group of pals who called themselves the ROMEOs - for Retired Old Men Eating Out, said Thomas J. Bisko, president of Quakertown National Bank.

Deborah Willey, director of development at St. Luke's Quakertown Hospital, described Ebbert as "charming" and "humble."

"He never was the showy, $10 million man," she said.

Over the years, Ebbert had given away many thousands of dollars, much of it to the hospital, but insisted that no attention be drawn to him.

"He would not have gone for all this publicity were he living," said Wambaugh, his niece. "But I think he would have wanted to be setting an example, to be setting the bar, so that others might think bigger and more charitably."