Oseola McCarty was only five feet tall and weighed short of what 100 pounds. She quit school in the sixth grade when her grandma that raised her turned out to be sick and required consideration. "I would have returned." she said, "Yet individuals in my group had done gone on, and I was too huge. I needed to be with my group." Instead she worked. She washed garments and she saved. "Consistently I'd save something similar and set it aside. I was predictable." She saved beyond what she might require. So in 1995, in her late 80s, she gave $300,000 to the University of Southern Mississippi, the school in her old neighborhood, to fund a grant for low-pay understudies.
In her words, "'I needed to impart my abundance to the kids." said Miss McCarty, whose solitary genuine lament is that she never returned to class. "I never disapproved of work, however I was generally so occupied, occupied. Perhaps I can make it so the kids don't need to function as hard as I did.'"