Mary Rueb lived her life simply and pursued her passions quietly. Known to all by her nickname, “Betsy,” she resided in the same inconspicuous house in Upper Arlington that she had shared for decades with her husband Floyd, who died in 1983.
She enjoyed doing needlepoint, watching golf tournaments and tending to her investments—an interest she cultivated after Floyd’s death.
She loved and cared about children, though she never had any of her own.
The Columbus Foundation announced in fall 2024 that Rueb had arranged for the foundation to receive a $55 million gift from her estate.
The money would be used to create an endowed scholarship fund for Central Ohio youth.
Rueb had laid the groundwork for the donation in the early 1990s, when, with her estate planning attorney, she first made contact with the Columbus Foundation.
“She shared with us that she was going to be able to make what anybody would regard as a significant gift under her estate plans, but nobody dreamed it would amount to what it amounted to,” says J. Bradley Britton, Columbus Foundation director of planned giving and general counsel.
“She told us early that if she had left this earth at that particular time, we might get something like half a million dollars.”
Although officials at the Columbus Foundation knew Rueb’s assets had grown, no one knew how dramatically. “We didn’t know that exact number until after she was gone,” says Britton, who notes the final amount of $55 million represents the largest endowed gift the foundation has ever received.
“We don’t have a threshold for, ‘You’ve got to have millions of dollars to do business with us,’ at all,” Britton says. “It’ll be what it’ll be, and we’ll be grateful no matter what. It turned out to be this extraordinary number for somebody who led a very quiet life and wasn’t presenting herself as a wealthy person.”
Charity, modesty, and humility are Rueb’s gifts and her own approach to living. Born in Seneca County, Rueb trained as a nurse at the Marion General Hospital School of Practical Nursing, from which she graduated in 1958. She and her husband moved to their home on Halstead Road in 1960.
“Her house was lovely, and you could tell when you walked into it that there was money there, but it wasn’t gaudy,” says Connie Becker, Rueb’s closest friend and also her accountant. “She had very good taste in what she put together there, and I don’t think she ever changed it the whole time that she lived there.”
Although she never worked as a nurse, Rueb possessed a caring, compassionate side that reflected her training. “I would describe her as a very loving person,” Becker says. “She firmly believed in God and where she was going to be someday. She was kind, but she was feisty. …She was opinionated, she was intelligent.”
She was also a quick study: Floyd Rueb, a vice president of sales at National Machinery, taught his wife about the fine art of investing, and, upon his death, she diligently grew their investments. “He taught her everything he knew about watching the stock market,” Becker says. “I would have put her against any stockbroker in town. She was that good.”
Rueb committed herself to understanding the way markets work. She read The Wall Street Journal and studied various business magazines. “She had her black book, and that was her job every day,” Becker says. “She would sit and keep track of her dividends coming in, putting them in her black book, and looking at the stock splits and adding that all to her black book.”
From her husband, she learned the virtue of picking stocks wisely and exercising patience in holding onto them. “Floyd taught her to look for basically good blue-chip stocks, buy them when you can get them cheap and hold onto them forever,” Becker says. “She kind of did that. She didn’t have a lot of turnovers in her portfolio. But I always thought she had a secret phone in her house that the Lord would call her and say, ‘Hey, get into Limited’—or whatever.’ ”
Yet Rueb’s interest in investing was not a matter of accumulating assets for their own sake. She had a purpose in mind for her growing fortune. “I think she formed an opinion early on that since she wasn’t fortunate enough to have children of her own, she wanted to do something for kids,” Becker says. “The passion that she had for helping kids who needed help is why we’re talking today.”
Over three decades ago, Rueb and her attorney first got in touch with the Columbus Foundation about her plans, which, officials say, changed little over time. “She went through different versions of her estate plan over time, which is common for lots of people,” Britton says. “But her instructions to us, that came with her bequest to us, are almost totally word-for-word consistent from 1990 to when we [received the money].”
As for the half-a-million-dollar figure Rueb had mentioned to the foundation at one point, Becker says her friend was “low-balling it probably then.”
In 2013, Rueb suffered a fall at her home and spent a short stretch recovering at Riverside Methodist Hospital. “Then [the doctors] told me, ‘She cannot go back to her home by herself,’” says Becker, who ultimately recommended that Rueb move to the same assisted-living facility that once had been home to Becker’s own mother.
“She said, ‘If it was good enough for your mother, it’s good enough for me,’” Becker says. “She was very direct and very no-nonsensical.”
Rueb adjusted to her new surroundings, but by 2017, she started showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease. She moved to a memory-care unit in the same facility. Although she was reaching the final leg of her journey in life, the investments she had made were still growing. “She would’ve been amazed at how much was there when she passed,” Becker says. Upon her death, the bulk of Rueb’s estate went to the Columbus Foundation. “She made a few bequests, but not many,” Becker says.
As officially dubbed, the Mary E. Rueb Fund for the Columbus Foundation will make scholarships available to students from Franklin County and contiguous counties.
“It is for students who have demonstrated need as well as have demonstrated a record of academic achievement,” says Angela Parsons, vice president of donor services at the foundation, adding that scholarships can be used for colleges as well as training opportunities. “It’s really broad,” Parsons says.
“When [a scholarship] is awarded, the student gets a letter letting them know which scholarship is being awarded,” Parsons says. “It also has some history of Betsy and the fund, so the student knows who has made this scholarship possible.”
Because the scholarship fund is endowed, it will continue indefinitely. “We can thread the needle of making very, very significant grants out, using the funds to the maximum extent possible, while also being able to have it grow for the benefit of future scholarship awardees,” Britton says.
After three decades of staying quiet about Rueb’s plans for giving a helping hand to the young people of Central Ohio, Columbus Foundation officials sound pleased to finally spread the good news. “We let donors call the shots on how much we talk about this when they’re alive,” Britton says. “Now that she’s gone, and nobody can trouble her in knowing what she has, we’re thrilled to be able to share her name and her story.”
And what would Rueb herself think of all the hubbub? She would undoubtedly tell everyone to focus on the beneficiaries of her largesse.
“It’s all about the kids,” Becker says. “I keep thinking now, ‘Betsy, you may not have had any of your own children, but now you’ve got, and will have, thousands over the years.’ Because that’s the truth.”