By all accounts, Thomas Riley Brumfield lived a quiet, modest life in McComb, retiring as an Illinois Central Railroad engineer and spending the last 10 years of his life at an assisted living facility.
The Yazoo County native was a World War II Army veteran and moved to McComb to work for the railroad, starting out as a fireman.
He attended St. Alphonsus Catholic Church in McComb. He had no wife or children, and lived frugally. He was known to walk just about everywhere he went, topped with a straw hat to shield his fair skin from the sun.
So it probably came as a great surprise to many when, upon Brumfield’s Nov. 23, 2010, death at age 88, he left an estate worth more than $1.8 million.
And it came as an even bigger surprise to those who were beneficiaries of his estate — St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, St. Andrew’s Mission, the Salvation Army of McComb and the McComb Interdenominational Care Association.
The church and the three charities will split the estate equally, each to receive more than $400,000.
St. Alphonsus pastor, Father Brian Kaskie, said Brumfield’s donation is a testament of unselfish giving.
“He is a good example to us of how to help others benefit from our successes and how our giving can go beyond death and touch so many people,” Kaskie said. “He’s just been a blessing to us, both while living and in death.”
The donation, which came with no strings attached, was “a very big surprise,” Kaskie said.
“He was part of that ‘Greatest Generation.’ He may not have gone through the whole Depression, but he knew what it meant to save,” he said.
Kaskie saw Brumfield when visiting Aston Court.
“He was a very happy man. He was one man among many women (there),” Kaskie said jokingly. “We would have a communion service over there every week, and he was happy to take part in it.”
Jonah Lock, manager at Aston Court, where Brumfield had lived for more than 10 years, said the former resident was quiet, but always thinking.
“He was not a hermit, but he kept to himself,” Lock said. “He opened up to us in the last four years and let us take him places, like to the VA.”
He noted that Brumfield walked just about everywhere he went. When Good Karma restaurant was open on Delaware Avenue, Brumfield walked there to eat every day.
Later, before he died, he went to lunch every Friday at Days Inn with friends, including Marine veteran Red Womack, who died this year.
And he was frugal.
“He was the type of person who literally, for every dollar, saved 99 cents of it,” said Aston Court assistant manager Staci Lock Hamilton. “He didn’t have a phone. He didn’t take the newspaper; he read it here or walked to the library to read it. He was very, very conservative. We had to push him to get a new TV and spend money on himself.
“He was just a wonderful man. ... He was a delightful soul. For him to do this for the community is just unbelievable,” Hamilton said.
She encouraged Brumfield to make sure his finances and paperwork were in order.
Hamilton said Lock had a fall about six months before his death, “that shook him up a little bit.”
“We were talking one day, and he said he didn’t have a will,” Hamilton said. “He wanted (his money) to go to charity. He wanted to give the money to where it could be put to good use.”
Brumfield met with attorney Michael Austin, who encouraged his client to think about what he wanted to do with his holdings. Brumfield chose his church and the three local charity organizations. McComb CPA Wayne Hutchison is executor of Brumfield's estate.
Though he had no family of his own, Brumfield had a sister, Mary Margaret Vinson, who lives in Florida, along with two nieces and two nephews.
“He’d been wanting to go to Florida to see his sister,” Hamilton said, noting the two corresponded regularly by letter. Those letters were discovered after Brumfield’s death.
Patti Wheeler, Brumfield’s niece, said she knew her uncle lived modestly, but even she was surprised by the gift he left.
“He was very frugal in the way that he chose to live. He was part of that generation that was smart that way,” Wheeler said.
Because Brumfield never married, Wheeler said his family sometimes worried that he was alone, but she said, “He had friends everywhere.”
“One of the endearing things my mother found was that he had kept every one of the letters she had written him,” Wheeler said. “She had an opportunity to go back and read and remember what she wrote to him.”
Wheeler said Brumfield’s family didn’t know about his plans for donating his estate to the charities and said her uncle “preferred to keep his personal affairs private.”
Out of respect for Brumfield’s desire for privacy, his sister said only that, “I’m very proud of my brother’s generosity to the charities.”
The agencies that are receiving bequests are very appreciative of the gift at a time when they’re struggling to stretch their dollars farther each year. Now they’re ready to pay it forward.
Ed Codding, director of St. Andrew’s Mission, said the donation “came at the right time.”
“It certainly was a godsend with the economy the way it is. People have worked for less money to serve the people we have,” Codding said. “The funds will help supplement our work in the community, serving the people one person at a time.
“We’re going to continue our food ministry, medical clinic, counseling, drug and alcohol meetings, parenting classes, everything,” Codding said. “It’s going to help continue to support those ministries which will continue to grow. That’s our goal.”
For MICA, the news of the bequest was joyous.
“My first reaction was, ‘Wow, thank God!’ ” said the agency’s president Lillie Kollie. “We’re always praying for a financial blessing to extend what we’re already doing. So I said thank you for answering our prayers.
“This will go a long way. Not discounting the other organizations or churches or indivuduals that help MICA already, but this will allow us to do more things to our building and our shelter and to reach out to others,” she said. “It is truly a blessing.”
“I think it was his heart,” Kollie said of Brumfield. “He was so blessed and was able to bless us. ... It’s like a domino effect.”
Kollie said it was special to receive it from a person who wasn’t looking for recognition.
“It makes you want to be a better person. It does for me. That’s how it touched me,” she said.
But Kollie doesn’t want the giving to stop there.
“I hope churches continue to give, still donating canned foods, coming to our board meetings and getting the world out about our pantry,” she said. “We want people to be able to see what we are doing with the money. Not just holding on to it.”
Salvation Army Auxiliary Capt. Rick Boone of McComb was floored by the news of the bequest.
“We are ecstatic. That’s the word,” he said. “This is going to allow us to continue what we’ve been doing. We haven’t been able to do as much as we’d like. It will help us maintain and reach out further than we have in the past.”
Boone is still recovering from the “shock” of knowing the agency is a beneficiary. “We’re jumping for joy.”
After going through the Salvation Army channels, Boone said he learned Friday that the agency OK’d release for the funds to McComb. The other beneficiaries were waiting on word from the Salvation Army for the legal release of the gift.
“We want people to know all the money will be here in McComb, that’s for sure,” Boone said.
He said the generous gift will allow the Salvation Army’s thrift store to move into its larger quarters in the old Furniture Junction building on Highway 51 in McComb.
“Things had been getting really kind of tight,” Boone said. “It’s an answered prayer.”
