In 1994, recently deceased 79-year-old Thelma Pearl Howard was discovered to have over $9 million in her bank account, a fortune she had never revealed to have possessed.
Born in 1915, Thelma worked numerous jobs such as cleaning houses and selling water in order to get by. Her family was poor, her mother having died in childbirth, and so she spent several years working her way up.
But one day, in 1951, she landed a job working as a housekeeper at a mansion, where she would reside for the next three decades.
That mansion belonged to none other than animation giant Walt Disney.
Due to the relationship between the previous housekeeper and Disney’s two children, there was skepticism; the kids would be locked away in their rooms while cleaning was underway.
But Thelma had a heart of gold and was able to connect with the children, as well as the rest of the Disney family. The bond grew and grew. In the house that was far larger than any place she’d lived in before, she was treated like a member of the family.
As well as that, Thelma was a great housekeeper, making sure everyone was well cared for, and always had Disney’s favourite snack (hot dogs) there for when he arrived home from work. She was a perfectionist in her role: Disney once described her as a “real life Mary Poppins.”
For a while she was given a modest salary, but once Disney began to balloon into an empire, Thelma’s salary ballooned with it.
Rather exponentially, too.
In fact, every year on her birthday and Christmas, Disney himself would give Thelma shares of the company’s stock.
Of course, this would make a person very rich over the course of thirty years, and Thelma Howard died a multimillionaire, with a whopping 193,000 shares.
Her relationship with the entrepreneur, his children and grandchildren was such that it earned her undying generosity from this often very hard-to-please man.
And, out of respect for her boss, Thelma never once flaunted the money, keeping it as a secret from everyone.
In her will, she gave half the fortune to her son, Michael, and the other half to help disadvantaged children, now known as the Howard Foundation.