Who was Joan Kroc?

By DEVIN WEEKS

Staff Writer

COEUR d’ALENE — Joan Kroc wasn’t a trophy wife.

She grew up poor and came from humble beginnings.

She was a prolific piano player who taught lessons and was hired by a TV station to play during musical breaks.

She was the breadwinner in her family before she met her future husband, Ray.

Journalist and author Lisa Napoli describes her as “scrappy,” “hardworking,” and “feisty and plucky and a fantastic musician.”

Above all, Joan Kroc was fiercely compassionate.

“There was a hummingbird on her property that was injured and she called up the famous San Diego Zoo, which she’d been giving money over the years,” Napoli said. “She took the hummingbird to the zoo and they helped fix the hummingbird. So some multi-million-dollar check arrived afterwards to make sure that that was possible to continue that work.”

Napoli never met Joan, but she spent six years getting to know her by listening to stories, searching through newspapers and documents, conducting countless interviews and committing herself to finding out more about the philanthropic woman who inherited the McDonald’s fast food fortune.

“Having been a reporter for so many years, the process of discovery, it’s almost like, we think we can find everything out on Google,” Napoli said. “I had to go to bizarre archives, dusty things stuck in backs of rooms that nobody had looked at before or hadn’t looked at in decades. That process of discovery was really, really fun.”

Napoli unearthed secrets and found breadcrumbs of information that led her to bigger pieces of Joan’s life. One little crumb was a tiny newspaper announcement that Joan had filed for divorce from Ray in 1971, just a couple years after they were married.

“I wanted to know more, and I had to requisition papers in Chicago that took months to get,” Napoli said. “It’s something that taught me about patience, because we are so hardwired, especially when you work in the news business, to go fast, and there is just something fascinating about having to meet someone three or four times before they trusted you enough to tell you more about something. That was a really big kick for me.”

Napoli, of L.A., shared stories of discovering Joan during a luncheon Thursday at the Kroc Center. The event was held through a partnership with the Women’s Gift Alliance and well-attended by community members curious to know more about the woman whose name is on one of the most popular and well-used venues in North Idaho.

After Ray died in 1984, Joan was left with a fortune that kept increasing. She contributed funds to a number of causes when she was alive and following her death in 2003, including the Salvation Army, the hospice movement, alcoholism education, National Public Radio and much, much more.

“Most of us are not going to have $3 million, much less $3 billion to give away,” Napoli said. “What I learned from her, and what I grew to love about her — and it’s not obvious right away — we all have something to give and do.”

Napoli recorded her findings in her book, “Ray & Joan: The Man who Made the McDonald’s Fortune and the Woman who Gave it All Away.”

Salvation Army senior pastor Maj. Ronda Gilger thanked Napoli for the comprehensive research that went into helping the world learn more about the philanthropic heiress.

“I know you’ve invested a lot of yourself,” she said to Napoli.

“We live in a world of ‘fast-food’ journalism, and ‘add the facts as you go,’ kind of reporting,” she said to the room. “This (book), for me, really looked at the intersection and influence between Ray and Joan, both of their stories, and then the impact … what she learned in life and turned that outward and gave to her community. Somehow, we’ve all been a part of that dream, otherwise you wouldn’t be sitting here today.”

“Ray & Joan: The Man who Made the McDonald’s Fortune and the Woman who Gave it All Away” is available at the Well-Read Moose and online.

Info: www.lisanapoli.com