Tri-Cities veteran who lived like a pauper donates $1.5 million to save pets and more

A lifelong Pasco bachelor with an austere lifestyle has left $1.5 million to Tri-Cities charities.

Thomas Ashby, a retired railroad engineer and Army veteran, divided his estate among three nonprofit local agencies, said Kurt Bautch, his friend of more than two decades.

Ashby died Feb. 22 at age 93. He had lived in Tri-Cities for nearly 50 years.

Bautch, who is managing Ashby’s estate, handed over a check for more than $500,000 to the Tri-Cities Animal Shelter last week to help with a new facility that has been the center of a fundraising campaign for a decade.

The American Legion Post 34 Kennewick Pasco and Salvation Army also will receive donations of about $500,000 each at an future date, he said.

Bautch and Ashby met at the American Legion in Pasco about 25 years ago. While 66-year-old Bautch worked until last September, he served as an officer and often stopped by the Legion hall and talked with Ashby.

Ashby made two trips a day there, having a single beer each time. Then he went home to watch the news, Bautch said. On Fridays, he splurged on a glass of wine.

When Ashby was in an assisted living home, he also liked to have some wine — but only a single cup of coffee and only on Sundays while watching “60 Minutes,” Bautch told the Herald.

“It was funny that he was so set in his ways,” he said.

He said Ashby lived alone in the same rented Pasco four-plex for more than 40 years and wore his clothes until they were faded.

He drove the same Toyota Corolla for close to 25 years before breaking down and buying a new vehicle in 2017 when he was 89.

“He was happy driving his old car. He wore older clothes — though he would have new pairs of boots on when I would see him,” Bautch recalled.

Bautch said Ashby didn’t open up much about his family or his time in the military, but they talked just about everything else over the decades. He never married, didn’t have children and was an only child with no known living relatives.

His mother is believed to have died in a car wreck sometime in the 1970s.

He didn’t appear to spend money beyond necessities and was always thrifty — perhaps even cheap by some standards.

“He’d push the quarter — sometimes two — to the end of the bar for a tip,” Bautch said laughing. “So it blew me away when I realized how much we were talking about (donating) because he was so frugal.”

Ashby’s wealth was all in stocks and one third of his holdings were sold for the donation to the Tri-Cities Animal Shelter.