Odds and Ends: Teacher’s penny pinching pays off in $2M gift

Last updated on May 13, 2016 at 07:36 p.m.

CLEVELAND – A penny pinching math teacher who never earned more than $40,000 a year in salary has left $2 million to her Ohio alma mater.

Laura Bickimer died in April at age 93 after making plans to leave the bulk of her estate to Baldwin-Wallace College near Cleveland. She graduated from the school in 1936 with a 4.0 average.

Bickimer, who never married, retired from teaching in 1972 and lived out her life in a nursing home. Years ago, she wrote in an alumni questionnaire that she preferred washing her clothes in an old-fashioned wringer and tried each day to perform some act of kindness.

Bickimer never earned more than $40,000 in annual salary, but inherited wealth from family. The school will name a $50,000 scholarship after her.

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Man robs Colo. store with Star Trek sword

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Colorado police say a man with too much “Star Trek” on his mind used a sword modeled after the weapon carried by Klingon warriors to demand money from two convenience stores.

Investigators say the man took an unknown amount of cash from a 7-Eleven store Wednesday but left empty-handed when he tried to rob another store about 25 minutes later.

Police Lt. David Whitlock says no one was injured.

The StarTrek.com Web site says the double-pointed sword used by the Klingons on “Star Trek” is crescent-shaped and about a yard long. Police did not specify what material it was made of.

No one has been charged in the incident.

From Associated Press reports