‘Frugal man’ leaves health services $4m
"I was astounded, I hadn’t realised that he had kept saving so much money himself." Dame Claudia Orange, cousin
Desmond Schollum is remembered by loved ones as a frugal man bringing only a packet of marshmallows to Christmas.
So it came as a surprise to his family when they found he had left almost $4 million to health services across Auckland after he died aged 79 from undiagnosed oesophageal cancer.
Historian Dame Claudia Orange, a cousin of Schollum, said his neighbour would often pop into his modest Sandringham abode to check he had enough food in the house as he was known to rarely shop for himself.
“I was astounded, I hadn’t realised that he had kept saving so much money himself. Of course, the value of his money was boosted by the sale of the house,” Orange said.
Born in 1941, during World War II, Schollum was an only child who lived under his parents’ roof on Kiwitea St until the day he died. He never married, nor did he have children.
At home, he cared for his mum Frances until she died aged 92, in 2002, and his father Joseph — who was the oldest of 22 children — who died four years later, aged 98.
Dr Virginia Farnsworth-grodd, also Schollum’s cousin, said he used the services of Auckland City Hospital and particularly the renal clinic as he cared for his parents.
“He found them very helpful and felt health services needed support,” Farnsworth-grodd said.
The “creature of habit” was a descendant of German-speaking emigrants from near Pilsen, in what is now Czechia, who migrated to New Zealand in 1863 and 1874 and settled in Pu¯ hoi, north of Auckland.
“Local Ma¯ ori provided them support with shelter and food when the emigrants first stepped on to the banks of the river at Pu¯hoi,” Orange said.
Orange remembers Schollum’s parents living cautiously and it seemed he adopted their habits, “not spending much and saving a lot”.
She said that as a child Schollum wasn’t exciting to play with as she liked racing around and he didn’t.
“He was a bit of a loner who kept to himself a lot.
“Consequently, we didn’t get on marvellously and that’s probably why we gradually lost contact with each other,” Orange said.
The last question Orange asked
her late cousin, nearly a year before he died, was whether he had someone nearby that he could go to if he got into any trouble.
“He seemed very pleased with a Samoan woman who lived next door who he most closely related to.”
Schollum only had one job in his lifetime. In 1956, he joined the Auckland Star, aged 15, to complete his apprenticeship in hand typology setting. Back then, letters had to be laid out by hand before being punched on to paper with a typewriter.
“When he was told he had to become proficient in touch-typing, Des retired in December 1987,” Farnsworth-grodd said.
But that didn’t stop him from being curious about modern-day living. Farnsworth-grodd said he enjoyed watching television shows like Home and Away. Other fascinations included music — he would make lists of his favourite CDS, one being The Happy Wanderer by the Obernkirchen Children’s Choir — and photographing the local community.
Nothing, however, compared to his love for the weather. “He installed a weather station in his backyard with state of the art temperature gauge equipment and each day, without fail, he measured and recorded the changing patterns of temperature, rain and humidity,” Farnsworth-grodd said.
It was because of his weather notebook that she was able to help the Coroner determine Schollum died — on September 12, 2020.
His death was discovered after he failed to answer a phone call from Auckland City Hospital, intended to inform him he had cancer.
By then, it was too late.
No one knew how long he had been ill but he showed his appreciation to St John ambulance service, Auckland City Hospital, Mercy Hospice and Auckland’s Cancer Society by gifting them each $896,000.