Details Revealed About Library's Million Dollar Benefactor

resident Lu Burke passed away at age 90 in Southbury on Oct. 2010, leaving more than $1 million to the , its largest bequest ever.

The library was the sole beneficiary of her will.

Head Librarian Shirley Thorsen had no recollection of ever meeting or seeing Burke, who died of leukemia.

“She had an interesting literary career,” Thorsen said of the long-time Greenwich Village resident. “She was said to have been very smart, and what she knew about, she was an expert.”

Details about Burke's life are scant but Beth Lonegan, her housekeeper for close to six years, said that Burke loved words. Burke moved to the area from Greenwich Village about seven years ago.

“When I would come up with a new word, she would get out the dictionary and we would look it up,” Lonegan remembered with a smile, as she sat in the comfortable lobby of Pomperaug Woods.

Burke's love of words was no doubt the result of her many years as a copy reader for Life Magazine and a copy editor for the New Yorker. “She was afraid books were going to go away,” Lonegan said.

Burke left no known relatives behind except a niece, the daughter of her deceased step-brother. It is not known if they kept in touch. Only one person came regularly to visit Burke, and it was a longtime friend from Greenwich Village, who is believed to have worked with her in publishing. The pair took a train trip across the country when they were much younger.

She is said to have kept to herself at Pomperaug Woods.

“If she liked you, you were in. But if she didn't, well, she made her opinions of people quickly," said Robert Cavallaro, a groundskeeper at Pomperaug Woods. "There were some residents here who were teachers, and she liked them.”

“She appreciated intelligent and honest conversation,” Cavallaro said. “She knew her politics and her mind was sharp until the very end.”

Burke never married but she loved her work and often told Lonegan about the long, late hours she worked as an editor.  "She put the issues of the New Yorker to bed into the middle of the night and went out to a local Italian restaurant for a martini with a friend," Lonegan said.  

“She was kind of tough, but she only got mad at me once, and she felt bad about it. I hugged her, which she had not had a lot of in her life," Lonegan said sadly.

Cavallaro was available to help Burke when she needed it, and she was appreciative. “She drove a 1990 Honda that had about 17,000 miles on it. She just used it to drive into town, and a big deal for her was going to get the oil changed,” he laughed.

“You have to admire a woman like that,” Lonegan said. “She earned all that money herself. She was funny. She trusted one mechanic to work on her car. She loved a good Indian River grapefruit, but it had to be Indian River.”

 “Burke felt very strongly about what happened on 9/11.  From her apartment windows, she could see the Twin Towers fall,” Lonegan said.

It was not too much longer after 9/11 that Burke came to stay at Pomperaug. No one knows how she made her way from Greenwich Village to Southbury.