Custer County woman wills $5 million to three organizations

CLINTON, Okla. (AP) _ A Custer County woman described as prudent and frugal during her life has left a $5 million charitable trust fund in her will to three organizations. <br/><br/>Wilma Davis McElmurry

Saturday, April 22nd 2006, 12:16 pm

By: News On 6

CLINTON, Okla. (AP) _ A Custer County woman described as prudent and frugal during her life has left a $5 million charitable trust fund in her will to three organizations.

Wilma Davis McElmurry died last summer at age 89. She left instructions that the trust fund be divided between the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation in Oklahoma City, Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford and the Clinton Public Schools. Each will receive perpetual payments from the trust.

McElmurry did stipulate that half of the trust fund go to the OMRF's research on cancer and heart disease. McElmurry's father died from cancer and her mother died from a heart attack.

OMRF's director of planned giving, Tia Jones-Bibbs, said that McElmurry understood what it was like to lose a loved one to cancer and heart disease.

``This selfless gift will help OMRF's scientists transform Mrs. McElmurry's personal loss into a legacy of hope,'' Jones-Bibbs said.

OMRF should receive about $75,000 a year, Southwestern about $50,000 a year and the Clinton schools about $25,000 a year.

The money given to the schools will go for college scholarships for needy students, said Peggy Lash, a friend of McElmurry.

``Wilma would certainly be glad that something good was being done with her money,'' Lash said.

McElmurry, an only child, was born in 1916 and graduated from Southwestern in 1940. She spent more than three decades teaching in elementary schools in Arapaho and Clinton. She and her husband, Bonnie McElmurry _ who died in 1996 _ had no children.

The McElmurrys lived on a family farm north of Clinton. Her will dictates that the home be kept perpetually as it is now, without residents.

Most of her estate is from oil and natural gas resources and an inheritance she received. But she was frugal, wearing mostly handmade or secondhand clothes and a watch she bought for $1.

``She was the type of person who was fiercely independent and self-reliant,'' said her attorney, C.B. Graft of Clinton.