An Iowa carpenter secretly saved nearly $3 million to send 33 strangers to college!
Dale Schroeder worked as a carpenter for 67 years and died a simple man with no heir, but requested that his secret fortune of nearly $3 million be left to bless others.
Schroeder only owned two pair of jeans — one he wore to church and the other he wore to work — and drove an old Chevy truck. Not even his closest friends knew he had saved nearly $3 million when he died in 2005 at age 86.
Schroeder’s friend, Steve Nielsen, told KCCI “I nearly fell out of my chair” when he found out.
Shroeder saved his money over the years and told Nielsen that when he passed he wanted to help others with what he saved. Nielsen hadn’t a clue how much his friend was talking about.
He told Nielsen, ‘I never got the opportunity to go to college. So I’d like to help kids go to college,'”
Schroeder’s instructions were to use the money he saved to send small-town Iowa students to college. And because of the amount he had amassed, he was able to help change the lives of 33 people over the last 14 years.
One of the beneficiaries of Schroeder’s generosity was Kira Conard, an aspiring therapist, who didn’t think she’d be able to go to college because she grew up in a single-parent home with three older siblings.
On July 20, all 33 students who Schroeder put through college gathered together and celebrated the generous man’s legacy.