Two months ago, McCarty quit the assisted-living facility where she had stayed since undergoing colon cancer surgery in April 1998 and returned to her wood-frame house in Hattiesburg. Diagnosed on Sept. 7 with liver cancer, McCarty refused chemotherapy, choosing to let the disease run its course and to control the pain with morphine patches. "She said when the Lord wanted her, she wanted to go," says her travel companion, Jewel Brantley Tucker, 50. On Sept. 26, she died in her sleep.
Though never married, and childless, McCarty leaves behind those who loved her and claimed her as a surrogate grandmother, as well as countless admirers. Thanks to more than 600 donors in 30 states, the scholarship fund bearing her name is now worth $330,000 and has provided full scholarships to nine undergraduates. For her efforts, she received more than 150 awards and honorary degrees, a signal feat for a woman with only a sixth-grade education who spent 75 years scrubbing other people's laundry.
McCarty was born in Waynesboro, Miss., then moved to her grandmother's home in Hattiesburg at around age 6 after her widowed mother remarried. A lonely only child, she dreamed of a future in nursing until she had to quit school to care for an ailing aunt. Though the aunt recovered, McCarty never returned to school, convinced that she had fallen too far behind to catch up. Instead, she joined her grandmother and mother in the family trade, washing the laundry of Hattiesburg's elite.
With the passage of time, McCarty followed a routine that seldom varied, rising at dawn and washing and ironing until sundown. Over time she raised her fee from 50 cents to $10 a bundle—a week's worth of laundry for a family of four. But her personal comforts remained constant and modest: her house, her 13-inch black-and-white TV, her Bible. With neither time nor the inclination to spend, she saved $250,000. After arthritis forced her to retire in 1995, McCarty approached USM with an offer to start a scholarship fund. "Her giving $150,000 was the equivalent of the wealthy giving a billion," says university president Horace W. Fleming Jr. "People here were deeply moved."
So were people elsewhere. Suddenly, McCarty, a recluse so shy she rarely spoke, was a celebrity. In 1996, she carried the Olympic torch and published a book, Simple Wisdom for Rich Living, that sold more than 50,000 copies. To usher in 1997, the tiny woman who for decades had never gone more than a mile from her home jetted to Manhattan to preside over the ceremonial ball-dropping in Times Square. Along the way, McCarty got herself a 20-inch color TV and a gray wig, overcame her fear of flying and acquired a taste for bright dresses.
After cancer surgery last year, McCarty scaled back her travel and moved into an assisted-living community in her hometown. For $1,800 a month she finally had someone else to do the washing and ironing. Better still, for the first time in her life she had a wide circle of friends. "She made up for what she didn't have at the beginning," says Tucker. Yet to the end, McCarty remained humble and generous. "I don't care what she had," says Cynthia Eiland, 45, who visited daily, "she wanted to give you half of it."
Jill Smolowe
Ellise Pierce in Dallas
- Contributors:
- Ellise Pierce.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
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