Mary McConnell Bailey died as quietly as she lived. At her request, no services were held. No obituary was written. Even one of her closest friends cannot say for sure where she is buried.
But over the years, her name could be found hidden in the back pages of annual reports and the occasional news release of two city institutions that she had long cherished: the New York Public Library and the Central Park Conservancy. The steady pace of these yearly contributions only hinted at the fortune that she had inherited from her family’s involvement with a paper company whose composition pads are known to schoolchildren across America.
Now, nearly two years after her death in February 2011 at 88, the full depth of Ms. Bailey’s wealth and charity is emerging as donations totaling about $20 million began flowing from her estate to the library and the conservancy.
Ms. Bailey’s gifts were first reported in The New York Post.
“No one would have known her wealth,” said Paul M. Frank, a lawyer and friend who is one of the trustees of Ms. Bailey’s estate. “Picture an old New Englander; that is what she was, in that style.”
Amy Geduldig, a spokeswoman for the library system, called Ms. Bailey’s gift “one of the most significant ones that we’ve received in the past decade.”
Tall and graceful, Ms. Bailey grew up wealthy in Northampton, Mass. Members of her mother’s side of the family were directors of the Roaring Spring Blank Book Company, the maker of the popular marble-cover notebooks. Her stepfather was James Rennie, a Broadway star.
She lost her husband of less than two years, Frederick Bailey, in World War II and never remarried. Her one serious romance after that ended when the man died suddenly, said Lizanne Stoll, her longtime friend and neighbor.
Ms. Bailey lived in a sunny two-bedroom apartment on the 15th floor of a co-op on Sutton Place and never bothered to update the 1950s décor.
She traveled often, though less so in later years, visiting China and taking cooking classes in Europe.
She received a degree in early childhood education from Columbia and for a time taught kindergarten, according to Ms. Stoll.
Neighbors recall her as friendly and polite, but very private. She enjoyed the theater and nice restaurants, and dressed smartly in cashmere sweaters and slacks from Bergdorf Goodman and Lord & Taylor. But while she did not bargain shop, she did not spend lavishly either. She preferred taking the bus even after her doctor told her it would be safer to hire a car.
“She saw the meter on the taxi and thought it was wildly excessive,” Mr. Frank said.
Among the things she enjoyed most were strolls through Central Park and visiting her local library branch on East 58th Street.
The library plans to split her bequest: half for programming, materials and resources for the 87 branch libraries in Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island; and half for its four research libraries, according to Ms. Geduldig.
Douglas Blonsky, president of the Central Park Conservancy, said the gift to his group was left to its discretion on how to spend. The conservancy was planning an event in the spring to honor her.
Mr. Blonsky, who got to know Ms. Bailey over the years, believed one of the reasons that she was so fond of the conservancy was her memory of how the park had deteriorated by the 1980s, when crime was rampant.
Still, even as her contributions grew in later years, earning her a spot in the conservancy’s Chairman’s Circle for people who give $25,000 or more a year, she gave few clues of what was coming.
“She was the most lovely person you could imagine,” Mr. Blonsky said. “So it was mind blowing when we got the gift, because she never, never talked about her wealth.
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