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McDonald's heir revered for her unrivaled generosity to antiwar efforts
With an estimated fortune of $1.7 billion, Joan Kroc had a private jet, multiple houses, a yacht and servants.
That was her outward wealth, which didn't much distinguish her from those on the annual lists of the world's richest people. But she had inner wealth that did: an active and often restless conscience that earned her a revered place in the American peace movement.
At her death Oct. 12 at age 75 - at her home in Rancho Santa Fe, near San Diego - Joan Kroc's generosity to peace and antiwar groups was unrivaled, both in the amounts she gave and in her disinterest in being hailed. Days after her death, both the University of Notre Dame and the University of San Diego revealed that she had left $50 million to each school to be used for peace education. In 1986, she gave Notre Dame a $12 million gift and reluctantly allowed the Institute for International Peace Studies to be named after her.
In 2001, she gave more than $25 million to San Diego for its peace studies program.
She understood the need for education: Unless we teach our children peace, someone else will teach them violence.
Following the death in 1984 of her husband Ray Kroc, the owner of...