Eastside Catholic 'guardian angel' leaves $2 million surprise in will

Roberta Farmer wasn't a lavish spender. Nor was she a publicity hound.

Yesterday, Eastside Catholic High School officials said they had received a surprise gift: $2 million that Mrs. Farmer had left in her will to the Bellevue school and students she had "adopted" as her extended family.

It is the largest donation the parochial school has received in its 21-year history, said school President Jim Kubacki.

"She was kind of like our guardian angel," Kubacki said, referring to Eastside's benefactress. "She was about the most unpretentious a person as you'd ever want to meet."

Mrs. Farmer died April 13. She was 90 and had long battled emphysema.

For years, she quietly donated the money she made selling and developing the Bellevue properties she and her husband, George, bought when they moved from St. Louis.

Friday, her attorney made the announcement at the school's annual Grandparents Day celebration, an event that served as Mrs. Farmer's introduction to the school when she first attended the event years ago. She later became one of the school's trustees and set up a matching-gift program to encourage female graduates to give back to the school.

"Even though she and her husband had no children, she 'adopted' our students as her extended family," a news release from the school said.

The school, on Southeast 60th Street, has 505 students in grades nine through 12.

The gift was in addition to previous donations of $1 million and property worth another $1 million to the school, said Mrs. Farmer's lawyer, Richard Reed, who began working for her after George Farmer's death in 1951.

"She resisted spending money on herself and probably went without things most people wouldn't have put up with," said Reed, 80, who retired from his Seattle law practice in 1989 but continued to represent Mrs. Farmer.

"She was a tightwad," he said, with obvious affection.

In the 1940s, the Farmers bought 640 acres in what was then rural, unincorporated Bellevue. Married in Seattle in 1943, Mrs. Farmer didn't remarry after her husband died.

She had been raised a Catholic, and an older sister has been a nun for 70 years in St. Louis. Mrs. Farmer joined Sacred Heart parish in Bellevue and then helped form St. Louise and St. Madeleine Sophie parishes.

Part of the new gift will fund the new Roberta Farmer Memorial Scholarship, which will be awarded to a female junior or senior with financial need "who has demonstrated considerable interest in her parish," according to the announcement. The first recipient will be named May 24.

Kubacki, the school president, said school officials are waiting to see whether Mrs. Farmer stipulated specific uses for the $2 million in her will. For one thing, he said, Eastside Catholic would like to put up its own building; its present quarters are rented from the Bellevue School District.

Sara Jean Green can be reached at 206-515-5654 or sgreen@seattletimes.com.