If I Had a Million

As the eldest of nine children of poor Italian immigrants, John Deferrari was forced to quit school to help support his family. In Boston, whose North End slums were all that he knew, young John took up father Giovanni's career. A fruit basket on his arm, he started peddling apples and oranges in the State Street financial district.

The sight of State Street's prospering bankers and brokers filled him with determined envy. In rapid order, John acquired a pushcart, a store, then the building of which the store was a part. At 26, he was operating a wholesale fruit business and a swank new shop, dealing in imported delicacies. The shop was near the Boston Public Library. Thereafter, John spent all his spare time in the library, poring over volumes on real-estate law and economics.

That was about all that newsmen could pin down last week when John Deferrari, now a bony, brisk bachelor of 84, gave an amazed Boston Public Library more than $1,000,000 to set up a trust fund. For the presentation, he showed up in an uncomfortably new grey suit, the side pockets of which were fastened with safety pins as a protection against pickpockets. The library's board gratefully accepted his gift and agreed to his stipulation that income from the fund be used to build a John Deferrari wing containing his portrait.

Like a nocturnal creature suddenly caught in the sun, Deferrari recoiled from the wave of questions that followed. When someone asked him what he ate, he replied with octogenarian bluntness: "I ask my bowels. If they need food that will go right through me, I eat fruit. If I'm feeling good, I cook myself a steak."

John always cooks his steak at his old North End family home, where he does not live but goes every evening to prepare his only meal of the day. The house is fenced in and shuttered up. When a reporter caught him at the house last week, John Deferrari gave a quick explanation of his success: "I make good use of my time. I know the other fellow's business better than he does. I'm honest too. . . ." As he talked, he sidled through the iron gate, closed it, snapped the padlock. "I've talked too much now," he concluded, and disappeared into the house.

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