Three Shares and a Lifetime of Patience
In 1935, a secretary used her entire savings—$180—to buy three shares of her employer’s stock.
She never sold them.
When she died 75 years later, the college president who opened her will could only say: “Oh, my God.”
Grace Groner was born on April 4, 1909, on a small farm in Lake County, Illinois. She had a twin sister named Gladys. By the time they were 12 years old, both their parents had died.
The girls were orphans.
A family friend named George Anderson took them in. The Anderson family were prominent members of the community—residents of Lake Forest, one of the wealthiest towns in America. They didn’t just take the twins in. They raised them as family. They paid for boarding school. They paid for both sisters to attend Lake Forest College.
Grace graduated in 1931—right as the Great Depression devastated the nation.
She found work as a secretary at Abbott Laboratories, a pharmaceutical company near her home. She would stay there for 43 years.
In 1935, when she was 26 years old, Grace made a quiet decision. Abbott was offering specially issued stock to employees. Grace took every penny she had saved in the world—$180—and bought three shares at $60 each.
Then she did something extraordinary.
Nothing.
She never sold them. Not during World War II. Not through recessions. Not through booms. Not when the stock dipped. Not when it soared. For 75 years, she simply held those three shares and reinvested every dividend.
Meanwhile, her life stayed remarkably small.
For many years, she lived in a tiny apartment above the Lake Forest movie theater, owned by the Anderson family, caring for an elderly relative. When a friend willed her a small cottage, she moved into it. The single bedroom could barely accommodate a twin bed and dresser. The living room was smaller than many Lake Forest closets. The furniture was plain. The dishes were mismatched. The TV set looked like it was left over from the Johnson administration.
Lake Forest is filled with grand estates and luxury cars.
Grace felt no urge to keep up with anyone.
She got her clothes from rummage sales. When her car was stolen, she never replaced it—she just walked everywhere instead. Even in her final years, walker in hand, she would still tend her own garden.
Grace never married. Once, she came close—but the sister of the prospective groom blocked the marriage. She never had children.
What she had was friends. A gregarious personality. And an unshakeable commitment to giving quietly.
She volunteered for decades at the First Presbyterian Church. She volunteered as a secretary at Barat College. She attended Lake Forest College football games and cultural events. She stayed connected to the school that had given an orphaned girl a chance.
And she gave.
“She was very sensitive to people not having a whole lot,” Pastor Kent Kinney later said. “Grace would see those people, would know them, and she would make gifts.”
She funneled anonymous donations to needy residents through her attorney, William Marlatt. She donated $180,000 to Lake Forest College during her lifetime to start a scholarship fund that sent students abroad.
Almost nobody knew she was sitting on a fortune.
The stock split. Nine times back to 1964. The shares multiplied. The dividends compounded silently. That original $180 investment—her entire savings in the middle of the Depression—transformed in the background while Grace’s life stayed exactly the same.
Three shares became 2,304 shares from splits alone. Then the reinvested dividends added hundreds of thousands more. By the end, she owned over 100,000 shares of Abbott Laboratories.
Grace retired in 1974. She traveled extensively after that—the one indulgence she allowed herself. But she never touched the principal. She never needed to.
In 2008, at age 99, she set up a foundation to receive her estate upon her death.
On January 19, 2010, Grace Groner died at age 100.
Her attorney informed Lake Forest College president Stephen D. Schutt what the gift added up to.
“Oh, my God,” he said.
Grace’s estate was worth $7.2 million.
Her three shares of Abbott stock, purchased for $180 during the Depression by a 26-year-old orphan working as a secretary, had grown into a fortune that will change lives for generations.
She left nearly all of it to the Grace Elizabeth Groner Foundation—funding scholarships, study abroad programs, internships, and service projects for Lake Forest College students. The same college that had given her a chance 79 years earlier.
Grace never forgot that gift.
Now, every year, her foundation generates approximately $300,000 in opportunities for students who need what she once needed: a chance. An estimated 1,300 students will benefit from her will. Three-quarters of Lake Forest students receive financial aid—students who might never have those opportunities without a scholarship.
Grace’s little cottage was renovated and now houses two female Lake Forest College seniors each year. They live there as Grace’s guests. It’s called, with fitting simplicity, “Grace’s Cottage.”
The secretary who walked everywhere now helps hundreds walk toward their dreams.
She proved something powerful: you don’t need wealth to build wealth. You don’t need complicated strategies, perfect timing, or luck. Sometimes you just need patience, three shares of a good company, and the wisdom to let time work its magic.
She sat still for 75 years while the world rushed around her. She lived modestly while creating a legacy that will touch thousands of lives forever. She understood what most never learn: the most powerful investment isn’t what you buy—it’s what you refuse to sell.
Three shares. Seventy-five years. Seven million dollars. Countless lives changed.
All because one woman made a small decision and trusted it completely.
