An Iowa man who worked as a carpenter for 67 years sent thirty-three strangers to college following his death in 2005. Dale Schroeder quietly amassed $3 million in savings working at the same job. He set up a fund for students in Iowa who could not afford tuition. Now 14 years later, those funds have finally run out after 14 years.
Schroeder grew up poor and was never able to go to college, according to KCCI. He reportedly owned two pairs of jeans and drove a rusty Chevrolet truck. He never married and never had children. Before he passed away in 2005, he contacted his friend Steve Nielsen, who is a lawyer, to talk about what to do with his life savings. According to Neilson:
“He wanted to help kids that were like him that probably wouldn’t have an opportunity to go to college but for his gift,” Nielsen said. “I asked, ‘How much are we talking about, Dale?’ And he said, ‘Oh, just shy of $3 million.’ I nearly fell out of my chair.“1
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The bulk of the money went into Schroeder’s scholarship fund, which helped future doctors, teachers and therapists reach their dreams of going to college.
Neilsen said Schroeder had one caveat of accepting the scholarship, adding:
“All we ask is that you pay it forward. You can’t pay it back, because Dale’s gone. But you can remember him and you can emulate him.”1
The thirty-three beneficiaries refer to themselves as “Dale’s Kids,” and they have promised to pay it forward. Dale’s Kids recently gathered around Schroeder’s old lunchbox to talk about how much he changed their lives, even though they never knew them. Kira Conard is one of them. She remarked:
“I grew up in a single-parent household and I had three older sisters, so paying for all four of us was never an option. [It] almost made me feel powerless, like, ‘I want to do this, I have this goal but I can’t get there just because of the financial part.”1
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Conrad, who had hoped to attend college to become a therapist, was planning on using her high school graduation party as a platform to tell her friends and family that she would not be able to afford college. But right before making the announcement, Nielsen called Conrad and informed her that her $80,000 tuition would be covered thanks to Schroeder. Conrad said:
“I broke down into tears immediately. For a man that would never meet me, to give me basically a full ride to college, that’s incredible. That doesn’t happen.“1
What a beautiful story. We should all take the time to pay it forward in honor of Dale Schroeder.
