Gift Is Borne Of Bitterness -- Anne Scheiber Left $22 Million To Benefit Women Because She Felt She Was Unfairly Denied Promotion

NEW YORK - Anne Scheiber retired as a government auditor at the height of World War II, bitter about never having been promoted and never earning more than $4,000 a year.

Living frugally and investing wisely, she built her $5,000 savings into a stock portfolio valued this year at $22 million. Her last act was to bequeath the fortune to Yeshiva University to help women overcome discrimination.

Administrators at the Manhattan college had never even heard of the mysterious benefactor, who lived as a recluse until her death in January at age 101.

Scheiber's gift was borne of bitterness, her attorney said, because she felt that despite having a law degree she was held back for 23 years at the Internal Revenue Service simply because she was a woman. She retired in 1944.

"This grew on her year after year," attorney Benjamin Clark said. "She was very much embittered while employed at the IRS."

Clark, who met Scheiber in the mid-1950s, said she led a reclusive existence after retiring, living alone in her apartment on Manhattan's West Side for decades.

"She was the loneliest person. I never saw her smile," Clark said. "She was very distrustful of anybody. She didn't want anybody to know what she had, how much she had."

One of the few who did know was a longtime stockbroker, Bill Fay, who said Scheiber reinvested virtually all her earnings, rarely selling stock. At her death, her portfolio included such blue chips as Coca-Cola and Paramount.

The Anne Scheiber Scholarship and Loan Awards will go to aid needy students at Stern College, Yeshiva's woman's college, or female students at the university's Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Stern has 900 of the university's 6,000 students.

Scheiber, one of nine sisters and brothers, also left $50,000 to a niece and $100,000 to the American Society for Technion-Israel Institute for Technology, a fund-raising arm of the Israeli school.

"I don't think she knew what it was like to love or be loved," Clark said. "That was the saddest thing of all."