Indy | How Prozac saved this $800 million woman

Over the course of her life, Indianapolis' Ruth Lilly gave away an estimated $800 million, establishing herself as one of the nation's most generous philanthropists, Indianapolis Star reporters Robert King and Will Higgins report today in a fascinating story about the pharmaceutical heiress, who died this week. "Yet to many," they write, "Lilly was just a name on a building. She lived reclusively, perhaps the most famous person in Indianapolis few people ever saw."

Lilly, 94, was the last surviving great-grandchild of the founder of the Indianapolis-based drug giant, Eli Lilly and Co. "Ensconced behind the brick walls of her Kessler Boulevard mansion -- attended by a staff of nearly 50 people -- Lilly ventured out only occasionally,'' the Star's obituary says. "She sometimes visited organizations she'd funded, but more often she'd order her driver not to stop and be content with a glance."

The story continues: "Despite the comforts its dividends provided -- servants, country clubs, summers in Quissett Harbor and Wood's Hole in Massachusetts -- Lilly battled depression for most of her life. Only in her 70s was the veil lifted -- by Prozac, Eli Lilly and Co.'s revolutionary antidepressant. Of all her gifts, perhaps the most unexpected was the $100 million she donated in 2002 to an obscure, Chicago-based poetry association that revealed something deeply personal: Lilly was a poet at heart. Not only did she read it, she wrote it, though to little acclaim."

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