OXFORD - Arretha Cornell Sheriff walked through life without disturbing others.
Though friendly, she did not reveal her cares and dreams to colleagues at Miami University, nor did she impose her problems on them.
She quietly advised first-year women students from 1948 to 1962, acting as as a house mother, counselor and adviser. They affectionately called her Peg, and she cared for them like daughters, teaching to them to be ladies in a more genteel era.
But those young women are not the only legacies left by Mrs. Sheriff. Last Friday, Miami announced that its former employee - who earned no more than $5,000 a year as head resident adviser - had given the university $6.5 million, one of the biggest gifts in the school's long history.
"We all knew she was comfortable," said retired education professor Georgina Silliman of Oxford, "but we never suspected she was that comfortable."
Mrs. Silliman guesses that the money came from investments on blue-chip stocks, possibly originating with her husband or family members.
"I doubt seriously if she knew how much money she had," Mrs. Silliman said.
But former student dean Robert Etheridge, Mrs. Sheriff's boss her final two years at Miami, remembers it differently: "She loved to talk about the stock market. In retrospect, it's the only clue we have. Perhaps she played the market. But we'll never know. She didn't talk about it specifically."
That is because she was an extremely private person, said Dave Schul, vice president and trust officer for First National Bank of Southwest Ohio in Hamilton.
"Trusts are private documents, but I can say that she was quite knowledgeable (about stocks)," Mr. Schul said. "She knew what she was doing. She handled herself quite well. Also she was an interesting client. I deeply appreciated her."
Mr. Etheridge's wife, Veda, said she can still see Mrs. Sheriff standing in a residence hall, every curl of her short white hair in place and her skirts pressed immaculately.
"She was precise in her looks and life," Mrs. Etheridge said. "Out there somewhere there are a lot of women who learned about life from Arretha."
Mrs. Sheriff told friends she grew up near Glendale. When she died in Dayton on June 24, 1995, at age 98, she left a trust and instructions to give her money to the university she loved. A resident of Friendship Village retirement center in Trotwood since 1974, she had long lost contact with some of her friends at Miami.
Mrs. Silliman, 91, who still lives in Oxford, was Mrs. Sheriff's closest friend at Miami. In the 1950s, every night for about five years, they ate dinner together in residence halls where they lived with the girls. They ate on white tableclothes and played bridge into the evening.
"We chatted about the activities of the day, usually about the girls," Mrs. Silliman said. "You see, things were more cordial then. She taught young women to behave as ladies and to learn the social graces. It seems so distant now, a different world. We lived through the days of war and panty raids. People you worked with were a family.
"But all the time we knew each other, she never talked about her husband or her family - a sister and nephew was all she had. She was delightful, though; cheerful company. She wasn't sad. She wasn't the life of the party either, but she could hold her own. She was well-read."
To Mrs. Sheriff, Miami's gently sloping lots became life anchors. She graduated from the school in 1919, then married L.P. Sheriff. A year after his death in 1944 (nobody at the school knows how he died), she returned to Miami to obtain a master's degree in school administration.
After graduating in 1948, she stayed on campus, working in the great red brick edifices of East Hall, Logan Lodge, Hamilton Hall, Swing Hall and Bishop Hall.
"At that point in the history of Miami, we hired many women who needed a second career," Mr. Etheridge recalled. "Many had lost their husbands. They brought to their work a great deal of maturity and experience and solid support for the institution."
Mrs. Sheriff had a keen sense of right and wrong, but tempered with a sense of humor, Mr. Etheridge said.
"She was fun-loving, and she really enjoyed associating with students. Her life revolved around the women, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It was the old Miami."
ADVISER'S $6.5M BEQUEST STUNS MIAMI U. August 23, 1997
