A Philanthropist Of The Old School

Billionaire Ruth E. Lilly has a small frame, small hands, and a small, whispery voice when she talks. But she talks to almost no one. On the rare occasions when Lilly, 88, and the lone heiress to the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical fortune, leaves her home in Indianapolis' plush North Side, friends say it's often for a drive around town with her nurses. She likes to pass by the dozens of projects she supports. Before she was confined to a wheelchair, she once stopped in at the Ruth Lilly Health Education Center. Receptionist Louise David recalls that the organization's president "was so flustered" to see Lilly there. Flustered, but lucky. Most of Lilly's beneficiaries have never laid eyes on her.

In November, 2002, Lilly established herself as the first lady of verse -- and thrust herself unintentionally into the media spotlight -- when she pledged Eli Lilly & Co. (LLY ) stock, estimated then to be worth $100 million, to Poetry, a small Chicago-based magazine that previously had an endowment of only $200,000 and through which she has given an annual poetry prize since 1986.