HUNTINGDON, Pa. -- Dr. Larry Johnson made no secret that, upon his death, he would give his alma mater, Juniata College, enough money to create full-ride scholarships.What was not as clear was what else he planned to leave behind -- a refrigerator with food, a .38 caliber Harrington and Richardson handgun, and a native America purse made from dried buffalo scrotum.There was plenty more, too. That's because Johnson, 68, a California radiologist who never married, didn't simply write his school a check. He gave Juniata virtually his entire life, from a sandstone-colored Lexus and meticulously cataloged music collection to his beloved cat Princess.Suddenly, a school with 1,460 students found itself the owner of items as prized as a $1.3 million condo overlooking California's Monterey Bay and as odd as toilet paper purchased in bulk.The school clearly is grateful for its largest ever estate gift, which among other things, will enable needy high school graduates from Johnson's native Somerset, Pa. to attend Juniata. But the donation also has put the college in the delicate spot of deciding what parts of a man's life to keep and what parts to sell or simply give away.Such gifts are made to colleges from time to time when a donor decides that affinity for school trumps all else."It was a little sad," said Kim Kitchen, Juniata's director of planned giving, recalling how she inventoried items in the two-bedroom condo where Johnson died of an apparent heart attack last July."We knew Larry, but he really didn't open up his personal side," she said. "It felt a bit like I was walking into the most personal aspects of his life. Everything had been left as it was the moment he died."Before packing up the man's Lexus for the drive back to Pennsylvania from northern California, she found a home for Princess with a neighbor, cleaned out the refrigerator, and stood on a boat beneath the Golden Gate Bridge to help spread his ashes over San Francisco Bay."By his gift, Larry was elevating us up to the level of family," she said. "I thought it was important for me to be there."The donation, worth an estimated $6.5 million, includes not only the man's tangible personal property but also his retirement assets and investment accounts.The man who gave Juniata almost everything started out with practically nothing.Born in 1939, Larry Johnson grew up poor, the younger of two sons whose father abandoned the family before Larry was old enough to speak, said Gabriel Welsch, a Juniata administrator who researched the man's life. Johnson's mother, Mary Ellen Johnson, put her sons in an orphanage while she trained to be a nurse, then reclaimed them as she went to work.In high school, Johnson excelled academically, was a standout basketball player and served as class president, said Jerry Lowry, 68, a classmate at Somerset. But college would have been beyond Johnson's reach were it not for a scholarship from Juniata.A member of the college's Class of 1961, he never forgot the favor.So his will stipulated that $1.5 million be used to establish, in perpetuity, a four-year scholarship for tuition, room and board ($38,700 a year) for a Juniata student from Somerset Area High School who shows financial need, ability in natural sciences and leadership potential. Another $1.5 million will endow a scholarship to send a Juniata graduate to the University of Rochester school of medicine and dentistry, where Johnson got his medical degree.Income from the sale of tangible property can be used as Juniata sees fit.An avid traveler and collector of Native American and Southwest art, he worked in several states including Arizona, where he once served as a physician on a Navajo reservation. He kept few close friends, said the college, and almost never showed up in his own photos brought back home from trips he'd made alone. A digital camera purchased a week before his death had only images of his cat.Hyper-organized, his car trunk contained not just flares and a blanket but a cheat sheet that detailed and ranked menus of restaurants he frequented during long trips. Even the campus library staff was impressed with how he cataloged the 1,500 music CDs that will increase the library's collection by three-fold.Boxloads of pottery, paintings and imitation Navajo blankets -- items whose worth ranged from $10,000 to almost nothing -- were sold off or will adorn campus buildings including Juniata's historic Founders Hall, a red brick administration building dating to 1879 that is being gutted and restored.His handgun, a flatscreen TV and most of his household furnishings were sold in California, while his wardrobe and groceries went to a homeless shelter there. (E-mail Bill Schackner at bschackner(at)post-gazette.com)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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