Late Indiana Elementary Schoolteacher Leaves $1.5M to Alma Mater

Manchester University (MU) received an unrestricted donation of $1.5 million from a recently deceased elementary schoolteacher.

MU announced Alice R. Dentler, who died Jan. 1 at age 95, left the gift to her alma mater because her time at the Indiana university was “the best years of her life.”

“Receiving an unexpected and unrestricted realized bequest is always an exciting day in the office. We are overwhelmed with gratitude,” Melanie Harmon, MU vice president for advancement, said in the university’s announcement.

According to the university, Dentler graduated with a bachelor’s in elementary education in 1953 and worked as a schoolteacher for at least 30 years in Elkhart County, Indiana, until she retired in 1985. She more than fulfilled a prediction by her high school class that she would be teaching first grade within 10 years of graduation.

A friend described her as an “old-school” teacher who worked with children with life struggles, something Dentler understood since she grew up poor, according to MU. Her friend said she helped pay some students’ activity fees when they could not.

“Alice Dentler was a hero, a quiet hero,” said Harmon. “She was a regular contributor to Manchester over the years, but she never let on that she planned such a large bequest.”

“Manchester graduates make connections for life and work to make the world a better place,” MU President Stacy Young said in the announcement. “Alice Dentler’s legacy will live on in generations to come. I wish we could have thanked her in person.”

Dentler is the most recent schoolteacher to make a big posthumous donation to their alma mater. Earlier this year, another recently deceased schoolteacher Carol Mathews LeBeau, who graduated from William Paterson University in New Jersey, donated $1 million from her estate to fund scholarships for future teachers of students with disabilities.