The San Diego Union-Tribune
Posted with permission

October 13, 2003

From modest beginnings, Joan B. Kroc became one of the nation's leading philanthropists. The wife of the late Ray Kroc, founder of the McDonald's restaurant empire, donated millions of dollars to numerous charities and causes:

1928 -- Born Joan Beverly Mansfield in St. Paul, Minn., on Aug. 27. Her father worked for a railroad and her mother was an accomplished violinist. Mrs. Kroc was the elder of two daughters.

1943 -- At age 15, she teaches music. She studied music at the prestigious McPhail School of Music in Minneapolis.

1945 -- Marries Navy veteran Roland Smith. The following year her only child is born. The Smiths later divorce.

1957 -- Meets Ray A. Kroc at a St. Paul restaurant where she was playing the organ and he was attending a business meeting. "I was stunned by her blond beauty," he wrote later in his autobiography. Two years earlier, Ray Kroc had opened his first McDonald's hamburger stand in Des Plaines, Ill.

1965 -- Ray Kroc establishes the Kroc Foundation in Chicago. It supports medical research for the study of arthritis, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and various bone diseases.

1969 -- Ray and Joan Kroc marry.

1974 -- Ray Kroc purchases the San Diego Padres.

1976 -- Joan Kroc establishes her first philanthropic endeavor, Operation Cork, an alcoholism educational program based in La Jolla.

1984 -- Ray Kroc dies at 81. Joan Kroc succeeds him as owner of the Padres. The team makes it to its first World Series that season, losing to the Detroit Tigers. In that same year, Mrs. Kroc donates $100,000 to assist families of 21 victims slain at a McDonald's in San Ysidro.

1985 -- Mrs. Kroc takes out newspaper ads urging the immediate halt to nuclear weapons testing by the United States and the Soviet Union. The same year, she donates $3.3 million to the San Diego Zoo.

1986 -- The Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies opens at the University of Notre Dame with a $6 million contribution from Mrs. Kroc.

1987 -- Mrs. Kroc makes what was then considered to be the largest single contribution to a political party in American history, giving $1 million to the Democratic National Committee. Also that year, the St. Vincent de Paul Joan Kroc Center for the homeless opens with help from a $3 million contribution from Mrs. Kroc.

1988 -- Mrs. Kroc gives $625,000 to San Diego performing arts groups in the city's 1989 Soviet Arts Festival and $1 million to the city for the festival.

1990 -- Mrs. Kroc sells the Padres for $75 million to a group of businessmen led by television producer Tom Werner.

1991 -- The San Diego Hospice's palliative care center opens following a donation of $18.5 million from Mrs. Kroc.

1993 -- Donates McDonald's stock worth $60 million to Ronald McDonald Houses. Two years later, she donates $50 million to Ronald McDonald Children's Charities.

1997 -- Anonymously donates $15 million to flood victims in Grand Forks, N.D. and East Grand Forks, Minn.

2001 -- The Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice, a think tank created with her $25 million donation, opens at the University of San Diego.

2002 -- The Kroc-Copley Animal Shelter in San Diego opens. Mrs. Kroc and Helen K. Copley, chairman and publisher emeritus of The San Diego Union-Tribune, each contributed $2 million toward its construction.

2002 -- The Salvation Army's Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center opens in Rolando thanks to an $87 million donation from Mrs. Kroc.

2003 -- Mrs. Kroc dies of cancer at her home in Rancho Santa Fe on Oct. 12.

Library researcher Denise Davidson contributed to this report.

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