Mysterious gold-coin benefactor says he's blessed

The explanations for why he has dropped gold coins in Salvation Army kettles, sends checks to strangers who need help or leaves a $500 tip for his newspaper delivery guy this Christmas all start with his childhood.

“When we were kids, there was no money and my father couldn't get a job,” says the Arlington Heights donor whose anonymity we'll protect by calling him Hans. “We had a wooden ice box, but nothing in there.”

Born in 1922 in the town of Flensburg, Germany, on the Danish border, Hans was a baby when his family immigrated to Chicago. His father picked up English and worked with relatives as a paperhanger, until the Depression and his trouble with alcohol took its toll. Living in a basement apartment they shared with the rats, the family needed Hans, his two brothers and sister to pick up the slack.

“My father couldn't find work, but boy, he could find work for us,” Hans quips. “I worked all the time.”

The kids used a sled to deliver newspapers through the snow. They stood on street corners selling flowers or hawking popular magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post or Ladies' Home Journal. Now nearing his 90th birthday, Hans recalls with clarity the impact of a generous tip from one of his newspaper customers.

“Spaulding Avenue and George Street, second floor, apartment building, brick building, and that guy gave me 50 cents,” Hans says in explaining why he sent a $500 tip to his carrier this year. “I remember how good that made me feel.”

As a child, Hans wore tattered clothes and ate so much of the free rice given to poor folks that “I wouldn't eat rice for 20 years after I was married,” he says.

Having trouble with a grade-school English class, Hans would have flunked if not for a gruff, imposing teacher named Mrs. Ady, who cut him some slack and taught him that you can't judge a person from looking only at the outside.

“Sometimes they have a big heart,” Hans says. “During your lifetime you meet very kind people, and people you don't even know, who do nice things for you.”

Hans dropped out just a few weeks into high school because he was working full time at the A&P grocery learning how to be a butcher.

“That's where I met him,” says his wife, a neighborhood Jewish girl, whom we'll call Rachel to protect her anonymity. “He asked me out. I said I didn't like him, but I told him I had sisters.”

Hans didn't give up. One day, when Rachel's mother unwrapped the leg of lamb she bought for dinner, she found a message Hans left for her daughter.

“In parsley, he wrote, ‘I love you,'” Rachel says with a smile. “That was cute.”

They will celebrate their 69th wedding anniversary on Feb. 9.

When the United States entered World War II, Hans enlisted in the Navy and sailed for Europe aboard the Queen Mary ocean liner, which was converted into a troopship for the war.

“I didn't have any money, and I'm a smoker,” says Hans. The Salvation Army staff on board gave him cigarettes. In gratitude, he's always supported the Salvation Army, and has dropped a few gold coins into their kettles during the years. Another mysterious donor has done it the past couple of years.

“God bless the guy,” Hans says. “I didn't have any more coins.”

He traveled Europe, fighting German forces that included his first cousins.

“Ever hear of Omaha Beach?” Hans says. “I lost my best friend there. It still bothers me.”

He came home from the war and ran a butcher shop until the chain stores drove him out of business. In 1968, his brother got him a job selling insurance, where Hans became the top salesman.

“When you go in to see somebody, wear a hat. That was my trick — my hat,” Hans says. “Well, my other trick was working my fanny off.”

He sold more than $1 million in health insurance and took home more than $100,000 in salary his first year and every year until he retired with a pension in 1983. He and Rachel bought a modest ranch home in Palatine, reared three kids, traveled, brought back some nice art (an expert told him one unsigned drawing “might be a Rembrandt,” Hans says) and bought a second home in Wisconsin. They live in a modest condo they bought in the 1980s. Rachel bakes heavenly cookies. Hans smokes long cigars. They play the market, make smart investments and share the profits with good causes.

“He's always been generous, this year probably a little more than most because he thinks he's close,” says a son, acknowledging his dad's slipping health.

“My favorite thing is when I go to Panera and I see a young man with two or three kids,” says Hans, who sometimes pays for meals anonymously. “He's looking around and he never figures it's that old (guy) sitting there. That's the best part. I love that.”

Rachel, who is hard of hearing and missed Hans' confession about the gold coins, says her husband “gets a little carried away.”

“What do I need a new car for?” she says when Hans talks about replacing her 2006 Cadillac. “I'm going to hide the checkbook.”

Hans winks and says he's got enough money to write out a few more of those $500 checks.

“If anybody has been blessed in their lives, it's you and me,” Hans says, as he gives Rachel a kiss. “If the good Lord stood before us and said, ‘What else can I do for you?' I'd say absolutely nothing.”