Some people need only a few things in life to be happy. Robert was a man of simple habits and few desires.
He was able to devote his entire life to just one thing, even to the end. But after his death, things didn’t work out quite as he would have liked…
Difficult Childhood
Robert Morin was born in Nashua, New Hampshire, in 1938. Born with a curved spine and a clubfoot, and he had a severe limp for his entire life. He came from a working class family, his parents never even owned a house or a car.
Bright Young Man
One thing stood out about Robert from a very young age. He was a very smart boy. As he grew older, he became less and less interested in the things that interest other kids. He grew to prefer reading or studying alone.
First Of His Family
When he graduated from Nashua High School in 1955, he was as an honor student. The promising young man enrolled at the University of New Hampshire, and was the first person from his family to attend college.
Lots Of Hard Work
But it wasn’t smooth sailing for Robert. Due to money troubles, he had to repeatedly drop out of school and take on more work to make ends meet. Probably the best thing to happen to him during that time of his life was landing a part-time position at the UNH library. He liked it so much he got a master’s in library science, and stayed on full time after he graduated…
Poring Over Media
Robert’s job was cataloging the new media that came to the library. Before computers, that meant typing all their information on little cards. He was remarkably good at his job, and so was usually given the toughest assignments.
Devoted To His Job
Robert’s work as a librarian was his entire life. Though he was very sociable with his co-workers and the UNH students, he stopped short of ever developing many deep friendships. He preferred it that way, choosing to invest time in his hobbies rather than relationships…
Hobbyist
Robert followed those hobbies with the same enthusiasm and thoroughness that he brought to cataloguing. He claimed to have watched over 21,000 films at home with his VCR. And when his TV broke in the 90s, instead of buying a new one he took up a new hobby: reading every single book published in the US during the 1930s in chronological order.
Penny Pincher
Extremely frugal and fond of routine, Robert kept an ordered and simple life. He never traveled, even when on vacation. He even ate the same foods every day: a breakfast of Fritos and Coke from one of the library’s vending machines, a packed sandwich for lunch, and a frozen dinner at the end of the day. Living life so simply is how he was able to amass his fortune…
Financial Aid
In 1971, Robert met Ed Mullen, an insurance agent, when the two had to discuss a small life insurance policy he’d taken out with his mother, the only remaining member of his family he was on speaking terms with, as the beneficiary. At the time, Robert wasn’t very financially savvy, keeping the majority of his money in a checking account. With Ed’s help, Robert began to invest more intelligently.
Growing Wealth
Ed advised Robert on how to maximize his retirement funds and diversify his investments. Over the years, the two became closer and closer friends and Robert built up a multi-million dollar nest egg…
Secret Stash
Robert never discussed his growing wealth with anyone and not even the best detective would have figured it out from his lifestyle. Remaining extremely frugal, he drove the same car and wore the same clothes for decades.
Let’s Make It A Surprise
In 2004, when Robert’s mother died, he decided to change to make UNH the beneficiary of his estate. Even though Ed suggested several times that he alert the university about his eventual donation and specify how it should be used, Robert declined, preferring to keep his gift a secret…
Collapse
Then one day in 2014, Robert’s co-workers found the elderly man collapsed in his cubicle. He was taken to the hospital where he was diagnosed with colon cancer. Though he moved into an assisted living facility, Robert continued to work even while undergoing chemotherapy.
Big Gift
The following year, in March, Robert passed away. As he requested his entire estate, which was worth more than $4 million, was donated to UNH. But because Robert kept his donation a secret until his death, he hadn’t instructed the school on how his donation should be spent…
An Insult To His Memory
Stunningly, the University of New Hampshire pledged only $100,000 of the donation to the library that Robert had devoted 49 years of his life to. That perhaps would have made sense if the university was in dire need of money for some important project. Instead, they used $1 million, a full quarter of what Robert had donated, to purchase a high definition scoreboard for their football stadium.
Priorities
The university was in the process of renovating their football stadium and decided to capitalize on Robert’s donation by upgrading their planned scoreboard from a much more reasonably priced one to one with a $1 million dollar price tag. At the same time, they knew that such a move wouldn’t be well received…
Bad Press
It was clear to the school that UNF putting such a small portion of his donation – 2.5% – going to the library would receive a lot of bad press. “The gift is so large,” the president of the UNH Foundation, wrote in an email, “and he worked in the library and only a relatively small amount is going to the library.”
Put Some Spin On It
So the college began a media campaign to paint Robert as a huge football fan. The school learned that for the first time in his life, Robert had begun watching football in the assisted living home he moved into when he got cancer.
Revisionist History
The school used that little bit of information as the centerpiece in their opportunistic marketing campaign. They implied that Robert had in fact wanted a portion of his donation to go towards the school’s football program when every fact about the way he lived his life would suggest that the library was all he cared about.
A Token Bit Of Money
In the end, UNH got its million dollar scoreboard and the library got a token bit of money. Whether Robert would have been happy with that decision will forever be unknown.
