Lisa Napoli - Ray and Joan: The Man Who Made the McDonalds Fortune and the Woman Who Gave It All Away

E ven before she married Ray Kroc, Joan learned it was possible to outsource bad news. When she agreed to Rays proposal the second timesix years after first accepting and renegingRay had his lawyer break it to his then-wife that he wanted a divorce. Ray was notorious for having his trusted secretary fire employees for the slightest infraction, like wearing what he deemed an inappropriate hat or drinking the wrong cocktail. (Manhattans, he thought, were for sissies.) Inevitably, the next day, in the hazy aftermath of the heated moment, hed wonder why the person hadnt shown up for work.

After he died in 1984, leaving her heir to a fortune greater than one person could reasonably spend in a hundred lifetimes, Joan followed Rays example. Having decided she no longer wanted her former son-in-law to serve as her proxy on the board of that chauvinistic corporation McDonalds, she sent her Gulfstream jet to Chicago to pick up her chief advisor and bring him to her home in San Diego for a chat, then dispatched him back to company headquarters in suburban Chicago to relay her wishesdespite the fact that the ex-son-in-law lived just up the street from her. Feeling betrayed by a once-beloved cook who deigned to ask for a modest raise after years of service, she turned to another member of her personal staff to dismiss him.

Now, in June 2003, faced with the harsh reality that she was dying, Joan requested her personal physician break the difficult news to her immediate family.

It was early summer in southern California, a gloomy gray blotting the morning skies. Leaves on the eight hundred trees in and around Joans meticulously manicured thirteen-acre estate, Montagna de la Palomabuilt on land owned long ago by the earliest movie starsfeathered softly in a light breeze. The fragrant scent of blooming roses sweetened the dry desert air. Shed humored her head gardener, whod pleaded for the go-ahead to plant hundreds of the thorny bushes. He liked having a ready source of cut flowers. With the door to the family room closed and Joan nowhere in sight, the doctor held up a scan of the matriarchs brain, riddled with cancer.

This is the saddest day of my life, he said solemnly, explaining the nuances of this particular menace, a glioblastoma that had been slowly impeding Joans vision, her speech, her balance. The diagnosis clicked into focus what the family had been observing for a while. Linda, Joans only child, and Lindas four children, all women now, felt something had been off in the typically buoyant seventy-four-year-olds step. In March, she had radiated joy at the gala opening of one of her pet projects, surprising the crowd as she took to the stage with the hired entertainment for the night, Tony Bennett. And yet, to those who knew her, there was something not quite right.

At this point, the doctor revealed, the cancer would begin to grow at warp speed, wending its way through her brain, impacting every bit of her function, with the terrible, inevitable outcome: Joan had three to nine months to live.

A moment of silence pierced the room as the sad information soaked in, after which a few of the girls began to sob. The others froze in shock.

Only after she was sure the message had been relayed did Joan hobble in, masking her fractured gait as best she could. She had always been a blur of motion and cigarette smoke, action and forward momentum. Joan vibrated with life so intensely, it was impossible for anyone in her orbit to imagine a day when she wouldnt be present. So game, so intrepid, so opinionated and tough, Joan was a wildly unpredictable study in extremes. Shed hop into her jether prized possessionas casually as if it were a convertible, off to Vegas to gamble for sixteen hours straight, winning or losing a million bucks; or rouse her great-grandson for a trip to the convenience store for a hot dog in the middle of the night. Yet she was just as likely to feast on a simple salad for dinner and retire at seven p.m. after phoning to find help for some itinerant soul shed discovered in the parking lot of her neighborhood McDonalds. Publicly, shed appear meticulously put together in stylish Givenchy or elegant St. John, perfumed with a spicy hint of Yves Saint Laurents Opium, her hair so neatly coiffed it wouldnt move in a strong breeze. Many mornings after waking, she might whisk down the hill, hair wrapped in a turban to mask the impact of a night of sleep, so she could grab a Diet Coke (for her) and a Big Mac (for the lucky pooch who got to ride along). Occasionally, shed forget her purse and the kind cashier, who had no idea who she was, would wave her through; other times, shed proffer a hundred-dollar tip.