Final Wishes and Lasting Legacy

This is an IiHart podcast Guaranteed human. Paramount Plus is now the home of all your BET favorites. That sounds nice. With all new episodes of all the Queen's men. You stand up when you talk to the Qeen. Plus a whole new world of movies like Gladiator two. I must have power. Original series like The Shy. Life comes at you fast, whether youre ready for it or not. In live sports like UFC He Welcome to Paradise. Same family. That's all that mattericed to me. Your BT favorites are now on Paramount Plus. subsscribe now This july fourth at Lowe's, get up to forty five percent off select major appliances. Plus, save eighty dollars on a select Charboyal Performance Series gas Grill, now two hundred ninety nine dollars. Our best lineup is here at Lowe's. Lowe's, we help you save Valid through seven A, while supplies last, selection varies by location. Siloos d. com for more details Visit your nearby Low's on Tonenell Avenue in North Bergen This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. I'm going to be honest with you. I am online way more than I probably should be. And between me and everyone else at my house, we've got a zillion screens going on at any given moment. So when my internet slows down, it is a full crisis. That's why having fast, reliable internet that can keep up really matters and why you need optimum famously Fast fiber Internet Optimum fiber blows flaky five G out of the water and keeps it cool with the fastest and most reliable speeds that don't slow when things heat up. And right now, they have the deal of the summer, just thirty dollars a month for five years. So don't wait, callall eight eight eight for optimum. Visit optimum dot com or stop by your local optimum store today Famously fast fiber for thirty dollars a month for five years. You can't beat it Terms apppply see optimum dot com for details. If you've been sitting on a business idea for a while, consider this the sign to take action. It can even be made official today by creating a website with Wix Harmony. Just tell Wix Harmony what you want and it will build the entire site. Business features included, and everything can still be edited by hand. It's your website Your call Try it at wix dot com slash harmony. That's wix d. com slash harmony. It's nineteen ninety nine cononstruction site in San Diego. Plumes of dirt and fuel exhaust hang in the air A piece of heavy duty equipment is busy scooping soil. That's not an unusual sight in any major city What is unusual is the driver of the bulldozer A prim, well quothed senior citizen sporting a sharp navy blue blazer and expensive looking jewelry Despite looking more like Anne Landers than Bob the Builder, she scoops up heaps of soil, then gives a thumbs up to the assembled photographers. What some people don't know is that this woman is the sole reason work is about to begin on a massive community center for the city onene that promises to transform the landscape for underprivileged families. The price tag, a whopping ninety three million dollars. The woman's name is Joan Crock. And this community center is far from her only philanthropic endeavor She's spent the past three decades doling out vast sums of money to causes she deems worthy She doesn't rely on charitable boards or trusts that trickle money out. Jones' approach is simple If she thinks you or your organization need help, She'll write you a check A big check. Joonan's generosity has been facilitated by one of the great business success stories in modern American history. coffers have been filled by eggmcMuffins and McNuggets Big max Thanks to McDonald's, Joan is one of the world's wealthiest people and she's determined to die nearly bro This is how she did it. Welcome to Very Special Episodes, an IHart Original podcast I'm your host, Dana Schwartz, and this is Saint Joan of the Golden Arches. Welcome back to very special episodes. I'm Jason. She's Dana. Hey hey. He's Earon. Y. So look Chaotic philanthropy is maybe my favorite concept. So I'm really excited to spend some time in this world with Joan and her many billions of dollars. Who doesn't love a joyful look at philanthropy? Yeah, honestly, it's kind of the dream is to inherit millions and then billions of dollars and just be able to give that money to anyone you think deserves that money I think you'd be good at that, actually, Dana. I think you'd be an Mis. I read the news. There are definitely causes and places that I'm like they could use money. Yeah, right. We just need the money. If someone wants to donate the money to us and then we can ull it out. We will happily recirculate. I'm kind of shocked. This is our first McDonald's episode off the top of my head We could have done the Donald's Monopoly scam scam they were cheating it for years. Yeah, that was a great doc. Grimace, I think we could spend some time just All things grrimace and the gritty origin. The whole family history? Yeah. Do you guys know that my sister works for McDonald's? No. Yeah. My sister's in McDonald's corporate in Chicago Does your sister have any like a particular McDonald's lore that she's learned since working there No, but maybe I need to ask her. Maybe there's an episode in there M maybe she can give us like kind of pry open the door. I'll ask next time I'm back home, I'll ask for a tour I remember there was a guy I think in the Philippines who had managed to collect every happy meal toy ever going back to the beginning. That feels like a field trip episode. Amazing You can't drive more than a few miles almost anywhere in the US without passing a McDonald's or as the company itself puts it The closest McDonald is never far The Hamburger chain has nearly fourteen thousand locations domestically and double that internationally Is it healthy Not especially Is it cheap Well, not like it used to be. A large fry will set you back about five bucks these days But it is quick and it's predictable The burger you like in Des Moines will be the same in Los Angeles or Philadelphia or Anchorage That consistency was the work of a man named Ray Crock Another thing we forget in great business stories is that a lot of everything in life is about timing That's Lisa Napi, author of Ray and Jones. The biography of the man who made McDonald's a cultural and gastronomic sensation and the woman he loved And this was a moment in time when the nation was ripe for this kind of eating Ray didn't start McDonald's. The business began as a fast food restaurant concept run by Richard and Maurice McDonald On the West cooast, beginning in the nineteen forties At that time Ray was a restaurant supply salesman When the McDonalds brothers placed an order for eight milkshake machines Reay got Curious Few places could funnel out orders that quickly Who needed eight milkshake machines He checked them out He liked what he saw an efficient procession of hamburgers, fries, and shakes goingoing out the door in a process resembling a conveyor belt partnered with the brothers to take their food and their assembly line and franchise it. Over the next several years, Ray erected the golden arches in multiple cities and states He eventually bought out the McDonald brothers. And when the company finally went public Ray became a millionaire many, many times over. Well the siblings made a comparatively puny two point seven million dollars That led to a belief that Ray somehow tricked the brothers into selling Lisa argues that's too simplistic The idea that he screwed them is ridiculous. And you know I always say the correlate of that is my parents sold a house in Brooklyn, New York in the eighties for a really good sum of money that's now worth four times as much. It's not like they got screwed. They sold out at a particular moment in time for what was a good price then Now in total control of the business Ray is careful about choosing franchisees He wants to make sure they can execute the McDonald's philosophy of hot fast food at scale. So in those days, he'd often travel to meet prospective partners in person Get a feel for them. Make sure they wouldn't mess with R's perfectionist tendencies It was during one of those trips to Staint Paul, Minnesota in nineteen fifty seven that he first meets Joan. Joan was a beautiful younger woman playing piano and Ray had made a living early on in his life as a pianist himself. And so he was drawn to the piano to begin with and drawn to this beautiful woman playing piano The daughter of a railroad worker, Joan Mansfield grew up to be a music teacher When Ray meets her, Joan happens to be an entertainer at one of the prospective franchisees restaurants Playing for the benefit of customers. Both are smitten, despite Joan being twenty eight and Ray in his mid fifties. there's a problem Well, a couple of problems. Joan was married with a young kid at that point and Ray was much older with a faltering marriage For now, whatever chemistry stirred between them has to be ignored But a few years later, the two meet up again This time, both are divorced Well, Ray was about to be And so in nineteen sixty nine, Ray and Joan get married By this point, Ray is aash in hamburger dividends And in a roundabout way, so is Joanes. H husband had become a McDonald's franchisee and had been a success Thanks in large part to Joan herself who was a kind of silent partner in the venture Women weren't allowed to work in McDonald's at that point. Many of the people who were hired in the early McDonald's were ex military. They were young men, usually, and they were in uniform and very neat and tidy. and women were just not allowed. When a woman was involved with a McDonald's in those early days, it was usually because of a husband or they were a silent partner in the background Weird, yes, but this wasn't unusual women weren't allowed to work in a lot of places. It wasn't just McDonald's. Women actually at that time weren't allowed to have Credit cards in their name, not that everybody had credit cards, but they weren't allowed to have bank accounts in their own name. They weren't allowed to own real estate in their own name Marriage to a McDonald's franchisee was vastly different than life with the largest shareholder in the company and miles beyond Joan's childhood She had grown up during the depression of the nineteen thirties seeeeing firsthand the struggle and toil that can result from having empty pockets Her father often out of work Joan did not grow up rich. in fact, it was quite the opposite. and she married a man who also was not rich the first time. And so she was not to the manner born. In fact, she had a very scrappy up bringing in St. Paul Minnesota. And when she was married, she had to work several jobs, which wasn't typical for women necessarily back then, in order to help the family make ends meet After the couple moved from Chicago to San Diego in the nineteen seventies, Ray winds up buying the San Diego Padres baseball team. A glimpse into Ray's personality can be found during one of their early home games. Ray grabbed the public address system to insult their disappointing performance He said he had never seen quote such stupid ball playing in his life Joan, meanwhile, is grappling with life as Mrs. McDonald's A nickname she finds Reductive. She flirts with life as a socialite as well as life as a board member on Ray's own charitable foundoundation But raise giving is sometimes controversial. as in the time he donated to Richard Nixon's presidential campaign He received criticism for doing it to try and ensure the minimum wage paid to fast food workers remained capped Playing politics isn't Joan's game There are attempts to get her involved in running a chain of her own, a series of pet hotels But the idea never makes it past the planning stages. Joan also realizes she has no patience for what she calls dumb boards When you sit on a board, she said, That's just it. You sit and you're board She realized she didn't want to be what we would, you know, uncharitably call a trophy wife, which is spending the money of the wealthy man she had just married. That's when she started tipping into the philanthropy world Instead, Joan takes up a different cause alcoholism. In nineteen seventy four, she begins using Ray's foundoundation to back a program similar to alcoholics Anonymous the support group for those struggling with substance abuse She names it Operation Ct. which is croc spelled backwards What Joan did was she realized as anybody who's living with an alcoholic or an addict, will tell you, you have to get help for yourself And so she started getting involved with other people who were on this path of recognizing that this is a scourge, a societal scourge and starting to figure out ways to address it, both for themselves, how to live with somebody who's got a problem that can't be fixed and also how to message this out to the world and make it more socially acceptable to discuss it Corporation Cork partners with Dartmouth and funds educational programs for physicians who wouldn't normally receive training about alcohol issues in patients. Now when you go to the doctor, the first thing they ask you is, how much do you drink? Do you do drugs? But back then that did not happen. And so she worked with the medical school to help I mean, she didn't develop the curriculum. She worked with experts about how to teach young doctors. to identify potential problems among their patients talking about alcohol problems or even acknowledging it could be a problem. was unusual for the era It was swept under the rug But Joan readily speaks about the cause and her work in the space. Destigmatizing it When pressed for details on why the cause is so important to her Joan Yolie Dems She herself had never had a drinking problem She had simply grown tired of seeing alcoholics not getting the treatment they needed What she doesn't say is that the issue is extremely personal Ray has a drinking problem That rant on the Padres loudspeaker. Probably alcohol induced, though Ray denied it. But what's certain is that his drinking causes fractures in their marriage withith Joan at one point seeking separation and even filing for a restraining order They reconcile, but Ray is resistant to seeking treatment It was as though Joanes's attempt to normalize the need for help was an indirect message to Ray who finally agrees to enter a program In nineteen seventy nine Ray and Joan remain married up until Ray's death from heart failure at the age of eighty one in nineteen eighty four His estate, which is valued at over five hundred million dollars, is left to Jones And while she's obviously heartbroken There is purpose in her life The money that had previously been under the care of Ray and his foundation is free And so is Joan free to pursue her philanthropic sprint causes large and small Not everyone would be happy about that Summer is a gift It's The gift of days that last a little longer, a brighter state of mind So gift yourself a new Kia at the Kia Summer Sticker sales event, especially tacked vehicles including the Sorrento. Bortage, Carnival, as well as the Nuro Hybrid. All backed by a ten year one hundred thousand mile limited powertrain warranty. So the gift of summer can keep on giving for summers to come. Kia, Movement that inspires. Call eight hundred three thirty four Ka foretails hostosta Free event and seven hundred six twenty six to dealer warranty details Horseshoe Online Casino has a special offer for you, New Jersey. New users can get five hundred bonus spins in their first month on games like huff and lots of puff and more. It's simple and rewarding to play your casino favorites. Download and play today. Must be twenty one plus and physically present in New Jersey. minimum wagering within five days required to unlock bonuses. Full terms and wagering requirements at horseshoe onnlinecasino dot com slash promos. If you are someone you know is a gambling problem, call one eight hundred gambler The Second World War was the largest event in human history twenty part documentary series with Tom Higs. No part of the globe was untouched, no life unchanged experience the ultimate account of World War II. Every single person had a story These are the stories that make us who we are new episode toomorrow at A,art of History Honors two hundred fifty, only on the history channel In nineteen eighty four, the same year Ray passed, an unimaginable tragedy takes place in the town of San Yidro, California A man named James Huberty arms himself and storms a McDonald's location killing twenty one people and wounding nineteen others time, it's the deadliest mass shooting event in U.S history McDonald's dispatches Dick Starman to the city Dick is the senior vice president of communications worldwide presence in San Diego means getting to know Joan Crock better Here's Dick. So I went to her house and we had a nice conversation I had gotten to nowhere a little bit. that summer because I was in San Diego I had interacted with her a few times Anyway, she said to me, would you consider working with me like you worked with Ray over the years Dick agrees, mooonlighting in a sense for Joan while maintaining his position at McDonald's the Tom Haggin to her Michael Corleone. Cigliarary kind of became, I'm going to say her advisor, maybe senior advisor on a lot of things that she got involved in with her life, and especially her philanthropy The San Yidro shhooting prompts Joan to donate one hundred thousand dollars to families of victims According to Dick Joan acted even more quickly than McDonalds itself. She started the San J Cedro Survivors Fund And I believe she put one hundred thousand dollars into it to start it. We at McDonald's because it was right after this crisis that had happened in San Cedro in the McDonald's restaurant We stood back and said, why didn't we think of that? It was a great idea And McDonald's within a few hours contributed a million dollars to that fund This is one of the earliest examples of Joan's unconventional approach to giving She doesn't act foolishly But she does act quickly. Not long after, Joan attends a symposium in San Diego, relating to nuclear de escalation It's a fraught time for international superpowers with plenty of sabre rattling. Joan walks away with concerns about the potential for nuclear disaster. but she has a weapon of her own. Almost immediately, Joan begins writing checks to fund anti nuclear advocacy groups and to back distribution of anti nuclear literature She takes out full page ads in major newspapers decrying the nuclear climate and arguing for disarmament This doesn't come without controversy. Joan is still perceived by some as the Iidle Rich, a flush widow poking her nose into world affairs without qualifications. One editorial columnist writes that since the Pentagon doesn't make McNuggets Joan Crock shouldn't be entitled to an opinion about nuclear warfare Others write in, besieging her to stick her anti war rhetoric. in her quote, crazy crummy ear. It didn't help that Ray had been a Republican and thus often on the other side of the aisle as Joones. Joan, however, is not dissuaded. She continues to back the anti nuclear sentiment She's impressed by father Theodore Hesberg. The presresident of Notor Dain who's looking to open a hub for peace at the university. He asked Father Hesberg what he needed. and he said he needed a building. he was going to have a peace program at a peace inststitute He needed a building to house it in. And she looked at him and she said, I don't do buildings And he said, Well, he said, you asked me what I needed and that's what I need In nineteen eighty six, she donates six million dollars to Notre Dame to establish the Crock Institute for International Peace Studies. Years later at the University of San Diego, another major croc gift helps create the Joan B. Crock Institute for Peace and Justice, which launches in two thousand one The name part took some convincing One tenet of Joan's philanthropy is that it is largely done behind the scenes She shies away from public proclamations of her generosity Joan had other rules too. It was three things. It was like a three legged stool There was the person There was an organization and there was a cause what they wanted to do. You know, that was important to her over the years. so we're B and small. I mean, big, obviously you know, in the tens of millions of dollars, especially in her estate but also small in the hundreds of thousands sometimes. It was It's just depended upon the organization, the people you know, the organization size and and how she felt about it But if she avoids direct solicitations How does she decide where the Mc money goes? Joan is a voracious news junkie She reads newspapers, watches television, listens to the radio, and talks current events with friends She had televisions everywhere and she Of course, the computer age was coming on, especially in the nineties She was what I called a news nut. She loved listening to the news and knowing what was going on in the world Oftentimes she'd hear something or see something And if it interested her to a point where she wanted to find out more about it ask me to check it out Joan readed a story about a teacher trying to help a student in Tennessee confront prejudices over having AIDS, which was still heavily stigmatized She's moved to write a check to their school district two hundred thirty thousand dollars The sum helps balance their annual budget and prevents staff layoffs, including the teacher A doctor researching AIDS is in a hotel room When a check arrives from Joan for one million dollars A homeless shelter struggling for funds, soon receives eight hundred thousand dollars Some kind words from children's television host Fred Rogers sparks a friendship as well as donations to PBS There's no gathering of advisors, no interviews, no oversized checks presented on behalf of television cameras. It's whatever feels right. You know, sometometimes I give her a recommendation and And she'd listen to me and she'd go, okay, and then she'd do exactly the opposite which was fine. That was You know, I used to tell her it was her money Joan would describe her approach as a quote maverick salvationist One born, she said of her woman's intuition When Joan sees the San Diego Zoo is struggling financially She writes a check for three point three million dollars personal connection. injured hummingbird that lands in her yard which she has transported to the zoo via private chauffeur Treatment When the bird makes a full recovery, she writes another check. This time for a hundred thousand dollars to fund their hummingbird enclosure They loved to work with Joan Krack and she loved working with the zoo people. They used Every once in a while bring an exotic animal up to her home to show her Again, she just she loved the zoo because of what they did care and love for animals, which she had Obstacles, Joan didn't believe in them When she decides to repurpose a sprawling ranch once occupied by her and Ray in Sant Ininez, California as a getaway camp for sick children, Neighbors lodge complaints. So Joan sells the ranch and donates the proceeds to the Ronald McDonald House, a charitable arm of the company Joan isn't without a sense of humor either After she sees a story about a McDonald's customer who was denied extra pickles on his burger She sends him a five gallon jar with thousands of pickle slices She had fun while she was giving away Money She also had A little bit of the devil in her in a good way She loved the surprise people. She liked the shock people in a positive way, most of the time to help them, obviously. Getting Joan's attention could happen anywhere She was once on a plane with a doctor named Doris Howell The two struck up a conversation in which the doctor explained that she was looking to open a hospice Joan got back in touch with her offering eighteen million dollars for the project, the first freesting hospice in San Diego Countless people with terminal diagnoses spent their remaining time there including a man named Alan Bergsma Before his death Bergsma wrote to Joan to thank her Seven days before he died He wrote her this note tellelling her how grateful he was to be there It was one of the most miserable times of his entire life, but he was pleasantly surprised at how caring and lovely it was That's Stephanie Bergsmagh. Allen's wife at the time And they had a mailbox at the hospice and he put his note to her in the mailbox. So about a day later, she called and ask was to speak to him And he wasn't in any condition to do that. So she spoke to me I mean, I was sitting in the waiting room And we talked briefly and After that, I started having lunch with her Joan and Stephanie become fast friends Stephanie is exxecutive director of KPBS The local San Diego PBS affiliate Joan, ever the Newshound, believes public information is extremely valuable. So the checks start coming to the station Not because Stephanie asks But because she doesn't. Many years ago, I had lunch with the woman who was then running her foundation room, which subsequently was disbanded. And she said to me, You can never ask her for money. It's the kiss of death So we never asked for money In nineteen ninety seven Joan sees another opportunity to help Devastating floods ravage grand forks in North Dakota replacing thousands of families The area is close to where she once lived with her first husband Her donation of fifteen million dollars means each family receives about two thousand dollars while the community rebuilds Joan's only disappointment is that she's unable to do it anonymously An intrepid reporter makes note of her private plane flying in and reveals her identity But Joan refuses to accept a plaque bearing her name and maid in her honor. Bear in mind Joan's wealth correlates with the success of McDonald's As their stock rises, so does hers. By the end of the nineteen nineties, Joan's fortune is in the billions It's a massive sun and one that Joan is not looking to keep But she's about to get news that will force her to make quick decisions on what to do with it all Summer is a gift The gift of days that last a little longer, a brighter state of mind. So giveift yourself a new Kia at the Kia Summer Sticker Sales event, pecially tacked vehicles including the Sorrento, Sportage, Carnival, as well as the Nurohybrid all backed by a ten year one hundred thousand mile limited powertrain warranty. So the gift of summer can keep on giving for summers to come. Kia, Movement that inspires. Call eight hundred three three three four K for details h was just aree event and seven six twenty six to dealer for warranty details Horseshoe Online Casino has a special offer for you, New Jersey. New users can get five hundred bonus spins in their first month on games like Huff and lots of puff and more. It's simple and rewarding to play your casino favorites. Download and play today. Must be twenty one plus and physically present in New Jersey. mininimum wagering within five days required to unlock bonuses. Full terms and wagering requirements at horseshoe onnlinecasino dot com slash promos If you are someone you know is a gambling problem, call one eight hundred gambler The Second World War was the largest event in human history. twenty part documentary series with Tom Higs. No part of the globe was untouched, No life unchanged experience the ultimate account of World War II. Every single person had a story These are the stories that make us who we are Tom Hanks, new episode toomorrow at Aight, partart of History Honors two hundred fifty. O on the history channel In nineteen ninety seven, Joan and her friend, former San Diego mayor, Maureen O'Connor Take a drive through an underprivileged area of the city while being escorted by the Chief of pololice Blight is considerable This isn't the San Diego someone with Jones wealth typically sees. Here's Lisa Napoi again She saw these kids playing in the street and thought, it would be so great if we could start a recreation center for kids to go to So she makes a decision one that will reverberate for decades to come Joan donates ninety three million dollars to the Salvation Army for a sprawling one hundred ninety five thousand square foot community center in San Diego The idea itself is, like many of Joan's decisions slightly out of left field She's not a church goer while the Salvation Army makes faith a core tenet of their activities But Joan believes in the army for a good reason As a kid, she had seen the organization render aid to people and she believes they have one key asset. They operate economically, with none of the waste found in other charitable organizations As the Salvation army begins to break ground on the recC center which will come to be known as the Croc Center. Joan gets some news one of the few people she confides in Dick a Starman. She went to the doctor just for a quick MRI and You know, she got this terrible news that she had glioblastoma. and she had a short time to live. She had, you know, was given like three, four months to live because of the aggressive growth of apparently those tumors in the head. Time is beginning to run short Suddenly, questions of what to do with her fortune, which she's been dealing with on a case by case basis, are taking on a new urgency. She said, I got a lot of work to do and we've got a short time to do it. And so I jumped on a plane and went to San Diego and I was there or sixteen trips that summer back and forth because We had a lot of business to do and She had a pretty good idea what her estate plan looked like But she wanted to finalize things and make sure everything was right Patience, neverever Joones's virtue, has become a rare commodity Because of her friendship with Stephanie Bergsma and her affection for public radio She reaches out to PBS to discuss the possibility of a massive, massive donation PBS fumbles it. Well, the story is that someone in our organization was supposed to contact PBS and couldn't get a live person on the phone that got recordings And after a day or two of getting recordings and not being able to get through to somebody Apparently she said to hell with it That was it As a result, No one from PBS gets an invite to a party held at her house in two thousand three unbeknownst to the attendees Many are going to be the beneficiaries of Joan's wealth It's as though she wants to look them in the eyes One last time to get one more jolt of excitement from knowing Her money is going to make someone's life better Here's Lisa Napali They all had been summoned because she cared about them and what they would find out basically just several months later, is that they'd been summoned because they were going to be the recipients of her. L wishes In two thousand three, despite her illness, Joan is able to tour the croc center in San Diego in a wheelchair. Hoping her sunglasses will help preserve some of the anonymity she prefers. I mean when she was dying of glioblastoma of brain cancer the last few months of her life, she would go down to the R in Johan Crack Community Center in San Diego. and she'd sit in a wheelchair kind of have sunglasses on so nobody'd recognize her And she'd sit and watch the children and adults ice skate in the ice rink I mean, she loved being there and seeing people in the community enjoy it. And of course It turned out to be a rip roaring success in terms of peopleople in the community being welcomed there. One of the requirements that she had was that nobody would ever be denied admission to it and that It was for the community Just a few weeks later on october twelfth, two thousand three Joan Crock dies at the age of seventy five Tributes about her philanthropy come pouring in especially in her native San Diego. actual extent of her generosity isn't yet fully understood. After Joan's death Dick Starman begins making calls Among the first is two National Public Radio and Kevin Close, the NPR president, whom Joan had befriended. A Mr. Crack passed away I called him aboutb three days later I told him, I said, Kevin, get out of pencil and paper He did and I said, Write these numbers down And he said two, three And then I said Let's start adding zeros Anyway We added zeros until we got to twenty three million dollars And then I told him, I said, the heck at another zero In the end, NPR receives well over two hundred million dollars for operating expenses roughly twice their annual operating budget. It's funding and interest that pays for an expanding news staff and even employee bonuses KPBS, the San Diego PBS affiliate, which Stephanie Bergsma ran for decades, receives another five millionars But NPR isn't the biggest beneficiary of Joan's estate The San Diego Croc Center was a kind of proof of concept Once it was open and Joan realized the Salvation Army could realize her ambitions One of her final wishes was for the group to open dozens of croc centers in communities around the country to do that Joan leaves the army, what is at the time the largest single gift ever given to a charity O point five billion dollars almost her entire Cheeseburger fueled fortune for construction costs and endowments. But it wasn't all good news the Salvation Army was not set up to build recreation centers all around the country. That wasn't their mission. That isn't their mission. It's become part of their mission because of Joan Crock They were broadsided by this bequest and this sort of instruction from Joan about how to execute it. and I was told that pererhaps they might have turned down that gift because they literally It was such an enormous task to build dozens of these recreation centers. And if you've never seen one, it's really hard to imagine. Imagine the very fanciest YMCA health club that you've ever seen. They're not just places with a couple of, you know, gym gym equipment and a pool. they're really spectacular places. And that was the goal behind them is that they're really spectacular places and that they're available to everybody in that community. And they were built in communities that really needed it. And doing that is an incredibly complicated task. The Salvation Army struggles at first, concerned the ongoing operating costs might prove too challenging for some communities or that the gift might make a frugal charity seem too flush J four centers open in the next six years. after some early hiccups, The army winds up opening twenty six croc centers in cities like Philadelphia Memphis, Los Angeles, and others all of them collectively assisting over three million people Today, the San Diego Croc Center It sits on twelve point five acres and serves the community in a variety of ways From child carere to arts programs It's what Joan envisioned a place for people to come and be nourished psychologically and emotionally A monument to community solidarity the same kind of community Joan relied on in her depression era youth The centers also create what economists call a halo effect Building them means jobs in construction in spending and in the center itself while lowering costs for things like health care, thanks to fitness programs There were other gifts many of them In addition to an unknown sum left to her daughter from her first marriage More money went to the San Diego Zoo Hospice, opera, special Olympics, totaling in the tens of millions It took dick years to fully execute Joan's estate in compiling her book on Joan and Ray Crock Lisa Napi created a long list of Jonan's many donations. It goes on for pages But in fact, it's likely we'll never know the full extent of her generosity There are countless stories of anonymous giving of tips small and large to those experiencing homelessness, and even to workers handing her a fish of fileet at her local McDonald's drive through window Here's Dick Starman And she always looked at at Ray Cracks money that she inherited from him and she inherited his estate. She called herself a caretaker And she was a caretaker of his money to give it away She loved it. She had fun with it, and it was interesting to her And she loved surprising people or surprising organizations and doing things for them. It's probably a little too easy to cast Joan and Ray in stereotypical roles. Ray the corporate mercenary, more concerned with the hum of a food assembly line and Joan the more empathetic Ray was generous too And Joan was prone to quoting him in interviews asked about her giving, she said that Ray told her to remember one thing He had never seen a hearse followed by a brinks truck No, no. I mean, I think everything we do all the time influences everything we do next in our lives, no matter who we are. And so yes, I think she was wired to be compassionate because she knew what it was like not to have lot. And so once she did have a lot, she delighted in the idea of giving it away to places and people and causes that she found interesting and important Is the why even important Joan grew up during one of the most impoverished decades in American history