Legacy Matters
Her obituary here
Her will here
Her bequest here
The four very big ones (nearly quadruple the giving of any other American last year) will go to the Leona M and Harry B Helmsley Charitable Trust.
Among good causes and works it supports are: Greenwich Hospital, the Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths and Adults, and the Alzheimer's Association. She also gave $5m to the families of New York firefighters in the wake of 9/11.
The year's other big givers are Baron Hilton of hotels fame – $1.2bn; George Soros, the financial wizard – $474.6m; and Michael Bloomberg, the media magnate and residing mayor of New York – $205m.
And so Leona will go down to posterity in rather better odour than she lived, ever demandingly, among us. She was hard, tyrannical to staff (she once made a waiter in one of her hotels beg on his knees for his job after serving a cup of tea with a smidgen of water in the saucer), and petulantly fired one man when she discovered he was gay. But, in the years to come, thousands of Americans will owe their lives to the medical facilities her billions will provide. Why, the woman's very nearly a saint.