Middletown woman leaves $500K to two local nonprofits

The leaders of the Aquidneck Land Trust and Norman Bird Sanctuary knew Beth Everett as a member or at least a likely member of their respective nonprofits. That is to say they knew virtually nothing of the Middletown resident. “We never had any conversations with her,” said Natasha Harrison, the bird sanctuary’s executive director. “I did not know her. She was probably a member at one point but wasn’t on my radar at all.” The organizations were on Everett’s radar, though. After she died in April 2017, the attorney handling her estate sent the nonprofits a letter to say that Everett bequeathed $250,000 to each of them in her will. Both organizations recently received checks from the estate. “I fell off my chair,” recalled Charles Allott, executive director of the land trust. The donations were made in honor of her late husband, Walter Everett, who died in November 2005. He was 95. Everett specified that the gift to the land trust was for acquiring land to preserve it; the bequest to the bird sanctuary came with no strings attached and will be devoted to invasive plant management and removing trees that pose a hazard or are knocked down by a storm, Harrison said. Everett never revealed during her lifetime why she singled out the land trust and sanctuary or why they resonated with her and her husband.