It wasn’t just the way he looked – his ragged long black trench coat, worn-out boots and wiry, gray Albert Einstein hair. It was the mingled smell of body odor and spoiled food. His appearance at the reception desk of the prestigious Milwaukee investment brokerage set off a panic.
Behind closed doors, brokers buzzed. Who would get rid of the bum in the lobby before – God forbid – one of the firm’s big clients came in and saw him?
Somewhere in the bowels of Smith Barney, a neophyte broker named Bob Chernow drew the short straw. Ordered to “be polite but firm,” the decorated Vietnam veteran approached the stranger. “May I help you, sir?” he asked.
As Chernow tells it now, 32 years later, the story has the patina an oft-told tale: How the man in rags wanted to buy Puerto Rican bonds, a risky investment even for someone with money to lose. And how Chernow said: “With no disrespect sir, you don’t appear to be in that category,” prompting the man to pull out a savings book with a $210,000 balance.
It was confirmation, of course, of the old maxim: Never judge a man by his appearances. But it also began a relationship that profoundly affected both men, ultimately changing – and benefiting – Milwaukee.
Today, Bob Chernow is a vice president with RBC Dain Rauscher Wealth Management. One of the national firm’s top brokers, he manages $400 million for a who’s who of clients. He also oversees a foundation bearing the last name of that odiferous man in the lobby, Jim Tellier.
It is a stealthy foundation as unique and obscure as the man behind it. A stingy miser and relentless dumpster-diver, Tellier put the love of his life, his wife Betty, a City Hall charwoman, on a $5-a-week allowance, then invested her paycheck. A curmudgeon who rarely laughed, he had himself sterilized before marriage because he thought people shouldn’t bring children into such a cruel world.
Now, the miser’s money is helping make that world a little kinder and gentler. One Tellier Foundation grant taught homeless people how to use computers and gave them Internet access to help get jobs. Another bought residents rain barrels to reduce runoff into the lake. When a DNR river revitalization project ran out of money before a public landing could be built, Tellier completed it. When the children of illegal immigrants needed glasses and homeless veterans needed dental care, the foundation acted.
How this all came about seems almost like a fable, one that can only be pieced together from an octogenarian friend’s recollection here, an old love letter there and the extended family’s oral history.
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Betty Makoutz, the girl Jim Tellier would fall in love with, was born in Iron Mountain, Mich., on Oct. 13, 1913. The eighth of nine children raised on a dirt-poor farm in Niagara, Wis., Betty grew up accustomed to hard work and sacrifice.
In school, she struggled. Years later, she told friends she suffered seizures that often kept her home from class. “I had been told all my life that Betty had a high fever as a child and as a result was retarded. But she was sharp as a tack,” says her niece, Monica Ingwersen of Mequon.
Betty followed four siblings to Milwaukee looking for work. “Betty was just a farm girl in the city,” says Sheri Vanden Boom, another of Betty’s nieces. A muscular 5-foot-3 or 4 inches with a strong work ethic, Betty landed a job as a City Hall charwoman. She cleaned hallways and bathrooms and filled in at the reception desk. “She was really proud of that job,” remembers Dottie Makoutz Saler, the daughter of Betty’s younger brother Otto, who remained on the family farm.
On a Wednesday night in January 1941, Betty met a tall, trim, red-haired man named Jim Tellier at a YMCA dance. She was 27 and he was 26. Tellier came from a family of four children who’d grown up on the city’s North Side. He hadn’t excelled in school, either. The two hit it off immediately.
Tellier later wrote fondly of that evening, telling Betty, “When you are with me, your presence is like sunshine … I have everything else now so far as material needs are concerned.”
When she asked him to suggest a gift that she could buy him, he answered, “The only Christmas present I need or want is you Betty.” Then he added that she could probably save money by buying a weekly bus pass.
Chernow found 14 love letters among the belongings Betty left behind. He was taken by their simple beauty, coming from an uneducated man.
“Betty was a sweet thing, demure, kind of shy,” says Saler.
Tellier called her “the finest and sweetest girl who practices the Golden Rule.”
Betty came from a strict Catholic family, and Jim’s letters seemed equally religious. He wrote that his Easter “prayers and communion” would be offered up for her: “Betty Darling. My sincere wish is that God will bless you … that you will receive everything needed to give you lifelong perfect health, contentment, true happiness and sincere friends … I love you Betty Darling.”
World War II may have intervened, though there is no recollection of Jim serving in the military. He may have been hospitalized. His letters talk of being separated and the passage of years.
“Neither trials nor hardship have any effect on your love,” he wrote. “You have beauty in you that will always be fresh and appealing, the beauty of your character … I love you more now … I am living for you, Betty darling.”
A telegram followed: “WILL ARRIVE SUNDAY HOUR UNKNOWN WILL START WORK WEDNESDAY WOULD LIKE TO HAVE YOU GO WITH ME MONDAY TO BUY YOUR DIAMOND RING VERY LOVINGLY JIMMY.”
Wedding photos show a smiling Jim, a shy and happy Betty. Jim got a job binding books for a printer. Betty stayed on at City Hall. In time, they bought a home on North Marshall Street on the lower East Side. Jim’s elderly mother moved into the lower flat, where he cared for her until failing health forced her into a nursing home.
Friends and family remember how Jim threw an extravagant party at a Downtown hotel to celebrate the couple’s 25th wedding anniversary. Betty was all dressed up, but in a way, it was a last hurrah. Things began to change after Jim’s mother died and he lost his younger brother.
Jim’s older brother died of a ruptured appendix at age 12, leaving him as the oldest sibling. Jim and his younger brother couldn’t have been more different, their niece Carol Christopherson says. Tom was cheerful and outgoing; Jim dour and unapproachable. Tom moved to Michigan, where he worked in a bakery. But after a devastating divorce, he took his own life.
“It was after his brother’s suicide that Jim really became a miser. That really affected him,” says Chernow. “He never explained. I never asked.”
No one ever questioned Jim, who was prone to rages. “Betty was not unintelligent, but she lived with a man who was very, very dominating,” Chernow says.
At some point, Betty was diagnosed as bipolar. She may also have been “a little bit schizophrenic,” says her niece Saler, a registered nurse, recounting an incident when Betty said she heard voices. But for the most part, her condition was under control. She kept working and Jim ruled the roost.
“He was never cruel in the way of hitting her,” says Sylvester Schueller, a neighbor who met Betty at St. Hedwig’s Catholic Church. “But he was cruel in other ways – giving her so little money [$5 a week for bus fare and food], keeping her in the dark about everything.” That included even his sterilization, says another friend of Betty’s, Pat Vitrano.
Schueller, now 84, would run into Betty at the lunch counter at the Brady Street Pharmacy. It was one of her favorite spots, but she often had no money. “Half the time, we used to treat her,” Schueller says.
“In support of Uncle Jim … He controlled her, but he also protected her, and maybe she needed that,” says Saler.
Jim’s miserly ways grew. He rented the lower flat to a tenant who discovered he was paying to heat both units, recalls Schueller, adding that Jim was forced to pay the money back.
He built a cart for Betty, a smaller version of the big one he pushed himself as a dumpster-diver. Evenings and weekends, they would travel the streets going through other people’s trash. “She absolutely loved Jim,” says Ingwersen. But she was embarrassed by the scavenging, says Schueller.
Tellier invested only in tax-free instruments because he didn’t want to pay taxes to support the military he detested. Chernow ultimately convinced Tellier to buy Subaru of America stock. It rose from $29 a share to $210. “Jim bellyached for years about the capital gains tax he had to pay,” Chernow says, recalling how Jim told him, “Make sure it never happens again.”
Jim’s job ended. For a long time, his only work seems to have been dumpster-diving. Then he landed a job in the produce department of a Sentry store. “When Jim got all dressed up, he was nice-looking, and he had to be somewhat clean to work at Sentry,” says Schueller. The job had another perk. “Anytime something reached the expiration date, he’d take that home and they’d eat that. And he’d bring extra stuff over here, and I’d pay him for it,” Schueller says.
Jim scrimped on everything. “He needed cataract surgery,” recalls Chernow, who offered to drive Jim to the hospital. When he refused, Chernow made Jim promise to take a taxi, but the next morning, Jim and Betty were at the bus stop at 5 a.m.
But beneath the miserly exterior lay unexpected warmth. When Tellier heard about a houseful of neglected cats on the news, he told Chernow, “Take five or six thousand dollars. We need to help them so they can be adopted.”
One day, waiting outside Chernow’s office, Jim heard the broker say business was so bad, he had to beg with a tin cup. Tellier came into the office and closed the door behind him. “Mr. Chernow,” he said, “’I couldn’t help overhear. I can go down to my safety deposit box right now and give you $10,000.” It took Chernow months to convince Tellier he’d been joking.
But Jim also found endless ways to alienate people. He berated relatives in front of their children for bringing offspring into this hard world.
“Jim lost his religion somewhere along the line,” says Schueller. Tellier became both an atheist and a nudist. On several occasions, Betty told family members later, he forced her to go to nudist camps with him. The nudism drove a wedge between Tellier and Betty’s family. Jim’s habit of walking around the house naked and sunbathing nude on the second floor back porch scared away Betty’s friends.
He would sometimes appear on the doorsteps of family members in rags, reeking to high heaven and toting a trash bag. With Betty beside him, he was ready to spend several days as their uninvited guest.
Betty’s brother Otto was protective of his sister and welcomed her visits. “It was Betty’s one little escape, coming back home to the farm,” says his daughter Saler. Betty took the bus back twice a year, often alone, but when Jim joined her, the children were immediately spirited away. “After all,” says Saler, “this is a strict Catholic family and Jim was a nudist.”
His visits mortified the upwardly mobile members of Betty’s family. Betty’s sister Dorothy moved to Wauwatosa to put her poor farm girl past behind her. “My family lived in horror that Jim and Betty would just show up at the door,” says Ingwersen. Adds Vanden Boom, “My mother tried very hard to keep us from that embarrassment, the seamy side of the family.”
Jim preferred isolation anyway. He never trusted anyone – except for Chernow, says Christopherson: “It’s quite possible Bob Chernow was his only friend.”
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Nowadays, Bob Chernow occupies a corner office decorated with his own 17th- and 18th-century oils. From his 15th-floor perch, the wealthy broker can gaze down on Lake Michigan and the city sprawling before him.
Chernow had far to rise when he first met Tellier, and they had things in common. Both were decidedly anti-war; Chernow from his experience in Vietnam, while Tellier never gave a reason. They shared a concern for wildlife, something Chernow developed as a River Hills trustee when the village was being overrun by deer.
“Jim was really passionate about deer,” Chernow says. “He didn’t like to see the unnecessary loss of life.”
Chernow could also be a bit thrifty and eccentric. He drove an old beater of a car for years while living in posh River Hills. He moved to Grafton and recently bought a new car, a modest Toyota Corolla – an anomaly among successful brokers who advertise their stature by driving luxury autos.
Working in the most capitalistic of businesses, Chernow describes himself as “a left-wing socialist.” His only child, a daughter of 32, is a union organizer. He’s prone to quoting Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot.
He became a trusted adviser to Jim, who was afraid he would die before Betty and that people would take advantage of her due to her bipolar disease. He asked Chernow to be her guardian.
Chernow had met Betty only once, the sole time Jim brought her to the office. Shy, she barely spoke. But Chernow agreed – with one condition. He says he told Tellier, “I am not going to do what you’ve done. We’re going to spend money to make her life better.” Jim said that was fine.
In 1993, at age 78, Tellier died of a massive stroke. Chernow feared Tellier had gotten inferior emergency room care because of his penniless appearance. He investigated, but concluded Tellier would have died in any case.
Following Jim’s wishes, Chernow had his body cremated. When he delivered Jim’s ashes to Betty, he found her in a sorry state. Some of the plumbing wasn’t working, the basement was filled with food Jim had stockpiled, even perishables like yogurt, and it was going bad.
Betty’s disease had gotten worse, Chernow says. “One night, she came at me with a knife.” Another time, she hitchhiked back to the family farm at 3 a.m. Two hospitals and three doctors later, Betty’s health improved.
The estate was worth $2.5 million. Jim had set up a trust fund for Betty, while a second trust became the Tellier Foundation. Honoring Jim’s wishes, Chernow sent $300,000 to Save the Redwoods. Trees were important to Jim: He often brought home seedlings and planted them in the valley behind his house, Schueller says.
Using Betty’s trust fund, Chernow hired a decorated ex-Marine to look out for her. He had him move into the lower level of the Marshall Street house. The two cleaned out the basement, filling nine dumpsters with spoiled food.
Chernow had the home’s shaky staircase rebuilt and removed the dangerous wood-burning stove Jim used to heat the upstairs. He had the house redecorated and returned the dirty gray exterior to its pristine Cream City brick.
“He got her a dishwasher and a washer and dryer, all the things she’d never been able to experience,” says Ingwersen.
Chernow found a deal on a limo, and had Betty and her friends driven to Chicago for a shopping day. He sent her on an ocean cruise with the caretaker as an escort.
“I don’t think Betty ever had a new pair of shoes until Jim died,” says Christopherson. At age 81, Betty started having her hair done.
Next, Chernow focused on Jim’s and Betty’s siblings. He sent a check to Betty’s older brother Ruddy in northern Wisconsin, who promptly gave it to the Catholic Church. He sent $10,000 to Betty’s baby brother Otto, who thought it was junk mail and burned it. Chernow sent another.
By the late 1990s, the arrangement Chernow made so Betty could stay in her home began to break down. Her caretaker was arrested for having sex with minors. Since he was attracted to males and not females, Chernow says, “he was never a threat to Betty and she liked him.” But Chernow let him go.
At the recommendation of Ingwersen, Chernow moved Betty to a group home in Mequon where Ingwersen could check on her regularly. Chernow and Betty’s nieces took turns taking her to Mass at her beloved St. Hedwig’s and on other outings.
Betty was a woman of few words, all softly spoken. “If you didn’t listen closely, you couldn’t understand her,” says Vanden Boom. Chernow’s conversations with her shaped the foundation’s priorities.
Betty’s friends wanted her to buy a new organ for St. Hedwig’s, but the roof leaked and she fixed that instead. “Betty was really much more interested in supporting programs than in capital improvements,” says her former pastor, the Rev. Tim Kitzke. “She was very concerned with people who were homebound and elderly. That was an important part of her heart.” The foundation began – and continues – to provide grants for the church’s outreach program.
In those earlier years dining at the pharmacy, Betty was always attracted to any child she saw. That memory made friends like Schueller think her money should go to causes for children. She did help to underwrite a new Cass Street playground, but given Jim’s feeling about parents taking responsibility for their own children, Chernow avoided gifts to children’s causes.
Chernow put Christopherson in charge of Betty’s annual birthday gala. One year it was at the Hi Hat; another, at Pitch’s. The upper flat on Marshall Street would fill with Betty’s friends. “They were all 90-year-old women dolled up with gorgeous nails and jewelry,” says Vander Boom. “It was a very large gathering of eccentrics.”
At the age of 87, Betty learned she was dying of pancreatic cancer. Chernow purchased $9,000 worth of watches, gifts Betty gave to those closest to her.
She survived more than two years. “Bob [Chernow] did improve her life immensely,” Christopherson says. “I don’t think she would have lived to 90 otherwise.”
Betty died in April 2004 at age 90. Kitzke presided over the funeral; Chernow gave the eulogy. He quoted Albert Schweitzer: “At times, our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another.” Betty Tellier, he said, taught him the meaning of unselfish love.
Betty was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery along with Jim’s ashes.
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Patrick Curley, Mayor Tom Barrett’s chief of staff, remembers the day Bob Chernow, president of the Tellier Foundation, called. He asked whether the city would like funding to bring former Police Chief Bob Harrison to town to talk about how he lowered the crime rate 40 percent in Vacaville, Calif.
Chernow, a futurist, told Curley that he’d heard Harrison speak at a World Future Society meeting and thought Harrison’s approach might work for Milwaukee.
Chernow’s offer was intriguing, Curley says, but he was taken aback. “Foundations don’t usually work that way,” he says. “They don’t call you. You call them.”
Indeed, most have a prescribed grant-making process with application forms and evaluations. Tellier, by contrast, is a “don’t call us, we’ll call you” stealth foundation that seeks no publicity for its work, nor accepts requests for funding.
Often, Tellier invests in projects that have caught Chernow’s attention through his years of service on boards like the Regional Telecommunication Commission, the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District’s Citizen Advisory Council, and Common Ground (which combats racism). “We want to maximize the amount of money going to good causes,” he says. “We don’t want it eaten up by overhead.”
Like Betty, the foundation shies away from capital projects, opting instead to leverage small sums with greater potential impact. “We want to see if we can get government to do things better, in a more innovative way,” says Chernow.
Jim certainly would approve of the foundation’s frugality. By 2006, its assets had grown to $3.6 million. Its operating budget has been half the 7 percent median for foundations its size. There are no paid staffers. Chernow serves, gratis, as both president and treasurer. A modest fee goes to an outside investment adviser and an attorney/secretary.
Tellier gives away an average of $180,000 a year, slightly more than federal law requires. Beneficiaries have included the deer of River Hills, which were caught and sterilized rather than killed; a Catholic Charities program for people with disabilities; and an inner-city church program that taught 12- and 13-year-olds how to mow lawns. Keeping with Jim’s concern for cats, it has a longstanding relationship with the Milwaukee Area Animal Control Commission, which it pays to spay and neuter cats and dogs so area humane societies will take them and find them homes.
But Tellier’s biggest project, code-named “The Harrison Plan,” follows the California police chief’s approach to combating crime: It aims to set up neighborhood Family Justice Centers that offer medical and psychological help, social and neighborhood services, police and prosecutors, a restraining order clinic and even collaboration with Milwaukee Public Schools.
“Up to 90 percent of violent offenders prosecuted either had been in the child welfare system or been a witness to family violence. So the idea is to nip it in the bud,” explains Terry Perry, head of the city’s violence prevention office.
The local effort has already won support from the major players – the mayor, police chief and district attorney, MPS and social service agencies. Other cities have struggled to get that collaboration, Milwaukee Deputy District Attorney Kent Lovern says, but in Milwaukee, work has progressed “at a pretty aggressive pace” thanks to the Tellier Foundation.
Says Perry, “The beauty of this is that Bob Chernow really is listening carefully to find the good work people are already doing [elsewhere], and he is making Milwaukee a better place.”
Ironically, it is children who may benefit most from this Tellier project. “A big element of this is the kids who are experiencing all this violence,” Perry adds.
That might have bothered Jim, but Betty always reached out to children. And the foundation’s name, after all, doesn’t even mention the miser who helped create it. Instead, it is named after the charwoman who lived on $5 a week while she worked to clean the offices of city politicians. It’s called the Betty J. Tellier Foundation.
Mary Van de Kamp Nohl is a senior editor for Milwaukee Magazine.Write to her at mary.nohl@milwaukeemagazine.com.
