WWII Vet Leaves $3.3 Million to Skid Row Charities

During the next several weeks, more than $3 million will be given to skid row charities that care for the poorest residents in downtown Los Angeles.

The cash comes courtesy of a reclusive World War II vet with a frugal personality born of the depression and a heart full of compassion for the downtrodden.

Delmer Kallberg died about a year and a half ago at 98, and after willing a share of the money to his son and $500,000 to a local veterans hospital, he left the rest to be “distributed to the various charitable organizations on the so called skidrow.”

When some of the 30 charity leaders, which will each receive $100,000, asked to know more about the generous donor they never met, Jeffrey Kallberg wrote a brief biography about his father. It ended with this:

“My father was not a man who made friends easily. But he felt strongly that one of the purposes of his life was to fight for the ‘little guy’ (as he termed the most indigent of his clients), and it was in this realm that he most easily allowed his humanity to show through.”

(READ the story in the LA Times)