The San Diego Union-Tribune
Posted with permission

October 13, 2003                                     

A legacy of giving; San Diego philanthropist leaves a lasting imprint
By Jack Williams, Staff writer

Joan B. Kroc, the billionaire McDonald's heiress who saw her San Diego Padres into their first World Series and who used her fortune -- sometimes anonymously -- to benefit causes ranging from homelessness to world peace, has died.

Diagnosed more than three months ago with inoperable brain cancer, Mrs. Kroc died yesterday at her home in Rancho Santa Fe. She was 75.

Reflecting her desire for privacy and to keep the focus on the causes she supported, Mrs. Kroc kept her illness a secret to all but those closest to her.

"It was just like Joan," said Monsignor Joe Carroll, whose St. Vincent De Paul Village benefited from Mrs. Kroc's largess. "It was one of the best-kept secrets in town for somebody so famous."

As news of her death spread, community leaders spared no praise in acknowledging her widespread legacy.

Former Mayor Maureen O'Connor, a close friend of Mrs. Kroc's, said: "San Diego was privileged and very lucky to have Joan Kroc, whom I always called St. Joan of the Arches.

"She was a a woman of generous spirit and a loving heart for all people of San Diego. She has no equal."

In a March 19, 1990, story focusing on powerful women in the Sun Belt, Time magazine described a trio of "elegant ladies from the smart set" in San Diego: Mrs. Kroc; Helen K. Copley, owner of The Copley Press and publisher of The San Diego Union and the Evening Tribune; and O'Connor.

"Together, these wealthy women call many of the shots in the West's second-largest city," the magazine said.

Mrs. Kroc emerged as a civic-minded, hands-on philanthropist after inheriting the estate of her husband, Ray Kroc, the McDonald's Corp. founder and owner of the Padres, who died in January 1984.

Succeeding him as Padres owner, she saw the team win the first of its National League championships later that year. In 1990, she sold the Padres for $75 million to a group of 15 businessmen headed by Tom Werner and began to take her philanthropy to a new level.

"The more I give, the more fortunate I feel," she once told The San Diego Union-Tribune.

In sharing the wealth, she felt she was following her husband's example. "Ray was once asked in an interview why he gave so much of his wealth away," Mrs. Kroc said. "He said, 'I've never seen a Brinks truck following a hearse. Have you?'

" Last month, Forbes magazine estimated Mrs. Kroc's fortune at $1.7 billion, making her 121st on its list of the nation's wealthiest people.

Causes she supported over the years have included health research, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, help for the homeless, the arts, wildlife preservation, an animal shelter, programs to combat child abuse and victims of natural disasters.

"San Diego has lost one of its most cherished citizens today," Mayor Dick Murphy said. "Her generous philanthropy demonstrated her abiding affection for the city. She will be missed."

Among the most visible signs of Mrs. Kroc's philanthropy are a 12-acre Salvation Army community center that opened in June 2002 in ethnically diverse Rolando; the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego; the St. Vincent de Paul Joan Kroc Center for the homeless in downtown San Diego; San Diego Hospice palliative care center in Hillcrest; and the Kroc-Copley Animal Shelter in the Morena District.

The Salvation Army's Tim Foley, co-administrator of the Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center, which has welcomed more than 425,000 people since its opening, called Mrs. Kroc "truly one of God's special angels."

Mrs. Kroc donated $87 million to the Salvation Army -- the largest contribution in the 118-year history of the organization -- to create the community center at 6845 University Ave. Designed to expose children to the arts, educational programs and sports, it is known as the Salvation Army's Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center.

The last component of the center -- a 640-seat performing arts space at an adjoining education wing -- opened in March.

At the dedication of the arts space -- known as the Joan B. Kroc Theater -- featured guest Tony Bennett invited Mrs. Kroc, an accomplished pianist, to join him on stage for one of his songs. Although it was one of her last public appearances, Mrs. Kroc returned to the center about three weeks ago to check on a bronze sculpture by Henry Moore that she contributed to the center's garden area, Foley said.

Her gift to the center was believed to be among the largest ever by a San Diego resident to a local charity. Mrs. Kroc approached the Salvation Army about the project, one of the biggest community centers in the nation, after she toured some of the city's struggling eastern neighborhoods.

The Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at USD, an extension of Mrs. Kroc's commitment to world peace and conflict resolution, opened in late 2001 as a think tank for research and teaching.

She donated $25 million for construction and an additional $5 million to endow a lecture series on conflicts and human rights.

Mrs. Kroc also gave $6 million to the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, culminating more than 15 years of contributions to the school.

Without fanfare, she donated a sculpture by the renowned Giacomo Manzu to the institute in August, said Joyce Neu, the institute's director.

"One of her most abiding interests was trying to make people change the way they think and behave so that they can deal with their differences in a more benign way," Neu said. "She had such an amazing passion and dedication and was so wonderful, so much fun, to be with. You couldn't be apathetic around her."

Although she allowed her name to be used for projects such as the USD institute, sometimes in hopes it would attract other donors, she shied from the limelight.

"She turned down interview requests with Fortune and Forbes, but talked to a small community newspaper because she thought it would help the Salvation Army project here," said Dick Starmann, her spokesman who announced her death.

In 1997, Mrs. Kroc anonymously donated $15 million to flood victims in Grand Forks, N.D., and East Grand Forks, Minn. In an attempt to keep her identity a secret, she left her private jet and toured the flood-devastated region in a van.

When families devastated by the flood received $2,000 each, they knew her only as "the angel."

Later, reporters who checked ownership records of the jet that delivered her learned that it was registered to Joan B. Kroc Trustees.

"I'll tell you, that was really a godsend," Ruth Lindgren, 77, one of the beneficiaries in East Grand Forks, said last night.

"Everyone looked so helpless. Everybody was so down, wondering what they were going to do."

Lindgren and her husband, Harley, used the money to buy a trailer in which they lived while their house was rebuilt.

Mrs. Kroc's desire for anonymity came as no surprise to Carroll, head of St. Vincent de Paul Village. Carroll once recalled that she handed him a check, unsolicited, for $800,000.

When the mission-style St. Vincent de Paul Joan Kroc Center opened to house the homeless on Imperial Avenue in September 1987, "it was probably the first time she had ever permitted her name to be used on a building," Carroll said.

After contributing more than $3 million to build the center, Mrs. Kroc returned to serve meals. "She had a great knack of looking the homeless in the eye and treating them just like she treated me -- as a friend," Carroll said.

Mrs. Kroc also was a major benefactor of Ronald McDonald Children's Charities and Ronald McDonald Houses.

In 1993, she contributed more than 1.2 million shares of McDonald's stock, worth an estimated $60 million, directly to Ronald McDonald Houses, where parents whose children are undergoing medical treatment receive shelter.

She followed that two years later with a $50 million donation to Ronald McDonald Children's Charities, a grant-making organization that supports health care and medical research, education, the arts and civic and social services.

The San Diego Hospice care center, which opened for terminally ill patients in 1991, was established following an initial donation of $18.5 million from Mrs. Kroc.

"Her father had died in a hospice setting in Minneapolis," said Blair Blum, chief executive officer of San Diego Hospice. "She wanted to share that philosophy with the people of San Diego."

Mrs. Kroc and Helen K. Copley, chairman and publisher emeritus of The San Diego Union-Tribune, each contributed $2 million for the Kroc-Copley Animal Shelter, which opened in May 2002.

"Joan was an enormously giving person and wonderful friend to Mother and me," said David Copley, chairman and publisher of the Union-Tribune. "Their love of animals culminated in their collaborative efforts to build the new Kroc-Copley Humane Society. Joan's legacy will live on and on, thanks to all that she has done for this community and throughout the country."

On the political front, Mrs. Kroc became an activist in the nuclear disarmament movement after attending the National Women's Conference for the Prevention of Nuclear War in Washington in 1984.

The following year, she poured close to $3 million into the nuclear weapons debate. She bought newspaper ads, commissioned book printings and funded disarmament groups.

Joan Beverly Mansfield was born Aug. 27, 1928, in St. Paul, Minn. Although her father, a railroad worker, was out of work during the Depression, the family was able to pay for her piano lessons from the time she was 6 to 16.

Music was a priority in the Mansfield family. Mrs. Kroc's mother had been a concert violinist.

At 15, Mrs. Kroc began teaching piano, building a 38-student clientele. She played keyboard at a music store. She studied at the prestigious McPhail School of Music in Minneapolis.

At 17, she met and married Roland Smith, a young man fresh out of the Navy. As a young mother, in the early 1950s, she took a job playing the piano and organ in a St. Paul restaurant.

It was there she first caught the eye of Ray Kroc, then a budding burger tycoon. "I was stunned by her blond beauty," he later wrote in his autobiography.

Twelve years later, after he was divorced twice and she once, they were married. He was 26 years her senior but so youthful and energetic that she thought he was about 35, she would say many years later.

Ray Kroc bought the Padres in 1974 and the couple moved to San Diego two years later. After making her home here, Mrs. Kroc founded Operation Cork, which produced films and booklets and sponsored programs to educate health professionals about the dangers of alcoholism.

In 1980, she established what was believed to be the first employee-assistance program in major-league baseball for her team's players and staff with drug problems.

"Sadly, in her passing, people will really find out for the first time how much she meant to not only this community but to the world," said former Padres star Tony Gwynn. "She did things her way, not for recognition or other considerations but because it was the right thing to do.

"It's a shame that most of us will only now find out the extent of what Joan did. She was a great owner, person and humanitarian. I remember when I declared bankruptcy in 1987. It was my darkest hour. And Joan was there to offer me words of encouragement and to address the team on my behalf.

"She cared about the players and their families. Heck, she cared about everyone on the face of this earth. She loved to help people."

Survivors include a daughter; a sister, four grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

A private service is planned.

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