Hero Oseola McCarthy

Oseola McCarthy is a shining example of someone who had a relatively hard, spare life, yet sacrificed in an attempt to help others to have things easier than she did.

An African-American woman from Mississippi who had to drop out of school in sixth grade to help her family earn enough money to live, she spent a long life taking in laundry. Her earlier goal had been to become a nurse.

McCarthy lived very modestly and made a habit of always saving some of what she earned. In 1995, she donated $150,000 of her $280,000 life savings to be used to fund scholarships at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Compared to some gifts given to universities, the amount was relatively modest, but for someone who all her life had made so little money, it was stunning.

For her heroic act, she became a temporary American celebrity whose name kept coming back up as she received one award after another, including the Presidential Citizens Medal presented to her in 1995 by President Bill Clinton.

Before she died in 1999, surely she derived some satisfaction to seeing herself referred to in the media as Oseola McCarthy, washerwoman and philanthropist.