In July of 1954, an obscure milk shake mixer salesman walked into a fast food restaurant in San Bernardino, CA. The restaurant was operated by two brothers named McDonald, the result of this interaction profoundly changed American culture, business and nutrition forever.

Despite four decades and many years of dealing with a virtual absentee husband and serious anxiety over their household debt, Eleanor Kroc was still hanging in on the marriage.  That is until, in 1961, when Kroc said he wanted a divorce.  Ethel settled for the house, the Lincoln automobile and 30,000 dollars a year in alimony.  Part of Kroc’s decision to divorce stemmed from a relationship that began when he met a potential licensee at an upscale restaurant.  The keyboard player and singer at this restaurant was a stunning blonde named Joan Smith.  Kroc was so smitten that he could barely focus on the meeting, with Bob Zien, who owned this restaurant, the Criterion.  Zien hired Joan Smith’s husband Rawley Smith to manage his first McDonalds and entered into a partnership with Smith when Zien purchased a second franchise.  Because the Smith’s were then part of the McDonalds corporate family, they frequently interacted with Ray Kroc, who eventually verbalized his romantic feelings to Joan directly.  They agreed to leave their spouses, Kroc and Joan relocating to Woodland Hills, CA in late 1961.  They needed to cohabitate for six weeks to be able to get a quickie Nevada divorce but five weeks into the arrangement, Joan balked.  Her daughter disliked Kroc immediately and her mother was appalled.  Kroc had already sold his ownership of his Prince Castle distribution company to senior executives for 150,000 dollars, essentially a loan, and was committed to relocating to the West Coast, anyway, to personally spearhead McDonald’s West Coast expansion.            Joan eventually had second thoughts about breaking off the engagement, but by then Kroc had moved on. 

Kroc’s McDonald’s operation was mushrooming in size and he realized both his own personal limitations and that he needed to assemble a corporate structure to manage such a fast growing entity.  He already identified Fred Turner as an individual he wanted to include in his inner management circle. 

Once he delegated the operation of McDonalds to Fred Turner, Ray Kroc became as much of a media personality and company spokesman as opposed to a serious hands on administrator, something he never really enjoyed anyway.  He no longer had to worry much about business in any case. 

In 1973, a golden opportunity presented itself to Kroc that for him was the perfect outlet.  Based on his mid-western middle class Chicago roots, Kroc loved baseball and the Chicago Cubs and once his net worth became considerable, he made several inquiries into actually buying the team.  The long time owners, the Wrigley family were not interested in selling but in San Diego, the owner of baseball’s Padres, C. Arnholt Smith was battling his own bank’s failure, IRS demands for back taxes and fraud and embezzlement allegations.  He quickly sold off the Padres to a group intent on moving the team to Washington, DC but when the city of San Diego sued to block the deal, Smith couldn’t afford to wait.  Ray Kroc emerged as a civic hero quickly ponying up 12 million dollars for the team.  

After many years of very visible philanthropy, Joan Kroc began to step out of the limelight finding that with each gift or charity event, she was besieged by countless requests and pleas from thousands of determined individuals and organizations.  She never stopped giving money away, she just became much more spontaneous and anonymous, not wishing to spend her time fending off the public and frequently inspired by some news report of a particularly dreadful event.  She also spent much of the late nineties working with the San Diego chapter of the Salvation Army to create a community center, a kind of athletic and fitness facility, library auditorium, outdoor swimming pool and even an ice rink all rolled into one.  In 2002, 87 million dollars later, this 12 acre, 132,000 square foot facility became a reality, the Salvation Army Kroc Center.      

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