MEDFORD — A child of the Depression, James H. Connors lived frugally with his sister, Thelma, in a rented apartment in a vinyl-sided house. He ran a lock and key service; she worked for the telephone company. Neither married or had children.

Despite grumbling to his caretakers about the cost of groceries, laundry, and a new rug to replace an old one soiled by his dogs, James Connors did not really need to pinch pennies. Unbeknownst to most who knew him, Connors, who died last year at 89, had inherited a fortune in blue-chip stocks worth more than $3 million.

At his request, the money has been donated to the newly created James and Thelma Connors Foundation, which this summer will award 50 high school students from Medford scholarships of $3,000 each, inaugurating an annual legacy of giving to help city students afford college.

“A man who had six people at his funeral will end up helping hundreds, if not thousands,’’ said John Granara, James Connors’s longtime lawyer, who is now a trustee of the foundation.

The largesse has come as a shock to those who knew James Connors as an elderly, somewhat crotchety Air Force veteran who walked with a bit of a shuffle and whose only extravagance seemed to be his motorboat, which he would hitch to an RV and haul to a lakeside camp in New Hampshire.

“Holy moly,’’ said Frank Ricciardone, who is 95 and was Connors’s neighbor on Spring Street for nearly 50 years. “He didn’t look as if he was worth anything close to that.’’

Connors mostly kept to himself, he said, and gave only a casual wave to neighbors.

“He was a good kid, more or less alone except for his sister,’’ Ricciardone said.

A lifelong Medford resident who attended Medford High School and served in the Korean War, Connors and his sister inherited the stocks 50 years ago from an aunt and uncle, Granara said. They included holdings in major companies such as CSX, Exxon, and AT&T, and their value grew exponentially over the years. After Thelma died in 2004, James Connors used a portion of the dividends to pay bills and socked away the rest in passbook savings accounts.

He refused, however, to spend money on himself, said Paul Murphy, a plumber and former neighbor who, along with his wife, Nancy, took care of James Connors after Thelma’s death.

Connors, for example, wanted the Murphys to take his clothes to a coin-op laundromat around the corner, rather than pay $25 a week to have it picked up and cleaned by a delivery service.

“He was old-school,’’ Paul Murphy said. “He didn’t want to spend on laundry. He didn’t even want to spend on groceries.’’

But Connors liked helping others. He often mailed small donations to the Jimmy Fund and the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and to charities that supported Native Americans and veterans, Murphy said.

“Whenever someone sent something [asking for money], nine times out of 10, he would send something in,’’ Murphy said.

The donations were so frequent that the Murphys began to worry that Connors wouldn’t have enough money to pay for the assisted living facility in Malden, where he spent the last five years of his life. Although the Murphys knew he had stocks, they didn’t know he was a multimillionaire.

“We would say, ‘Jimmy, you’ve got to worry about you right now,’ ’’ Murphy said. It was only in the final weeks of Connors’s life, as the Murphys helped Connors organize his finances, that the couple learned his true worth.

“I said to someone, he could live in the Ritz and have people wait on him hand and foot, but he wasn’t like that,’’ Murphy said. “His philosophy was, don’t spend what you don’t need to spend.’’

Toward the end of Connors’s life, Granara began talking to his client about how he would want his fortune disbursed after his death. Granara knew that Connors often gave to charity, so he suggested a foundation that could fund scholarships for students. Connors liked the concept.

“He was intrigued by the idea that his and Thelma’s name would be out there, and would outlast him, and that he would help people he didn’t even know,’’ Granara said.

In his will, Connors also left $25,000 for Lawrence Memorial Hospital, where he had volunteered, pushing a mail cart through the corridors, and $25,000 for scholarships for Regis College nursing students at the hospital, whose work he admired.

But the bulk of Connors’s estate, Granara said, will go to high school students who live in Medford and who attend public, charter, or private schools.

To qualify for the scholarship, students need only attain a 2.3 grade point average — a relatively low bar meant to ensure that even students with average marks have a shot at attending college, something James and Thelma Connors never did.

“It’s fair to say we have broadened the scope of those who would be able to apply, and that is a reflection of the way Jim and Thelma lived,’’ said Michael J. McGlynn, a former mayor of Medford and trustee of the fund. “The life we thought they lived, from what we saw, was one of people of modest means, and we want to see those students get some benefit from that.’’

Levenson can be reached at michael.levenson@globe.com