Reclusive Donor’s Gifts Remake Small Massachusetts Town

A reclusive Central Massachusetts businessman has given the small town that houses his manufacturing company a series of new municipal facilities valued at about $20-million, according to The Boston Globe.

Albert Stone, owner of Sterilite, which makes plastic household goods such as dustpans and hampers, set no conditions on his gifts of a 17,000-square-foot library, a senior center, and a meeting hall in Townsend, Mass. He also insisted that the buildings not be named for him.

Townsend residents described Mr. Stone, who lives in nearby Groton and declines all interview requests, as a taciturn, staunchly private man who takes lunch daily in a local café but has otherwise remained largely invisible. His remarks at the opening ceremony for the new facilities on October 31 were believed to be his first public appearance in the town of 9,500, to which Sterilite moved in 1968.

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