Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Centers
In 1998, Joan Kroc, widow of McDonald's CEO Ray Kroc, donated $90 million to the Salvation Army to build a comprehensive community center in San Diego, California. Her wish was to create a center, supported in part by the community, where children and families would be exposed to different people, activities and arts that would otherwise be beyond their reach. Completed in 2002, the center sits on 12 acres (49,000 m2) and offers an ice arena, gymnasium, three pools, rock climbing walls, a performing arts theatre, an internet-based library, computer lab, and a school of visual and performing arts.
When Joan Kroc died in October 2003, she left $1.5 billion - much of her estate - to The Salvation Army, by far the largest charitable gift ever given to the Army, and the largest single gift given to any charity at one time. The initial disbursements of this bequest began in January 2005. The gift had by then grown to $1.8 billion and was split evenly among the four Army Territories - Central, East, South and West. The money was designated to build a series of state-of-the-art Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Centers nationwide patterned after the San Diego center.
By the end of 2009, the Army operated six centers across the country in Ashland, OH; Atlanta, GA; Coeur d'Alene, ID; Omaha, NE; Salem, OR; and San Francisco, CA. Seven more centers followed in 2010 in Dayton, OH; Grand Rapids, MI; Green Bay, WI; Kerrville, TX; Philadelphia, PA; and Quincy, IL. In 2011 centers opened in Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; Greenville, SC; Memphis, TN; Phoenix, AZ; and Honolulu, HI. A date of January 28, 2012 has been set for the South Bend, IN location. Opening dates are to be determined for the final six sites in Augusta, GA; Biloxi, MS; Camden, NJ; Staten Island, NY; Puerto Rico and Norfolk, VA.
Read more about this topic: Kroc Center
Famous quotes containing the words ray, joan, corps, community and/or centers:
“The reality is that zero defects in products plus zero pollution plus zero risk on the job is equivalent to maximum growth of government plus zero economic growth plus runaway inflation.”
—Dixie Lee Ray (b. 1924)
“Ah, Marilyn, Hollywoods Joan of Arc, our Ultimate Sacrificial Lamb. Well, let me tell you, she was mean, terribly mean. The meanest woman I have ever known in this town. I am appalled by this Marilyn Monroe cult. Perhaps its getting to be an act of courage to say the truth about her. Well, let me be courageous. I have never met anyone as utterly mean as Marilyn Monroe. Nor as utterly fabulous on the screen, and that includes Garbo.”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“There was nothing to equal it in the whole history of the Corps Diplomatique.”
—James Boswell (17401795)
“I dont think Dr. King helped racial harmony, I think he helped racial justice. What I profess to do is help the oppressed and if I cause a load of discomfort in the white community and the black community, that in my opinion means Im being effective, because Im not trying to make them comfortable. The job of an activist is to make people tense and cause social change.”
—Al, Reverend Sharpton (b. 1954)
“[Madness] is the jail we could all end up in. And we know it. And watch our step. For a lifetime. We behave. A fantastic and entire system of social control, by the threat of example as effective over the general population as detention centers in dictatorships, the image of the madhouse floats through every mind for the course of its lifetime.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)