OBITUARIES : Eula McClaney; Poor Girl Made, Gave Away Millions

Eula McClaney, who grew up under the stigma of being raised in a sharecropper’s shack in a cotton field in Alabama but went on to accrue a fortune in real estate, much of which she then donated to worthwhile causes, has died, it was learned Friday.

A spokeswoman said she had suffered a heart attack Thursday at her Los Angeles office and was pronounced dead at Midway Hospital. She was 74.

Honored just a year ago at City Hall for a multimillion-dollar gift she and her daughter, La-Doris, had given to 11 charities, Mrs. McClaney attributed her good fortune to a promise she once made to God. “That if he helped and blessed me, I would bless someone else.”

And God, she said in an interview just before that City Hall ceremony, had been with her all her life.

Sixth-Grade Education

“Prayer” and “sacrifice” are the two reasons she offered for the success she managed despite having to leave school after the sixth grade because that was all the education available to a poor black girl.

(Although she never went back to school, there’s an elementary school now named for her--the Eula McClaney Christian School.)

The third of five children, she married at 19 but was to eventually divorce her husband because he failed to share her enthusiasm for prosperity.

Early in their marriage she had talked him, she recalled, into leaving the South for Pittsburgh where she first began to pray for guidance.

“One morning a voice spoke to me and said, ‘Save every penny you get and go into real estate.’ ”

Saved Her Pennies

The pennies she saved came from selling sweet potato pie at 10 cents a slice and by riding the street car instead of buying an automobile. By 1944 she was able to purchase a three-story home, moved her family into it and rented out the top floor to help make the mortgage payments.

Within nine years she owned 33 housing units and moved into a lavish estate. Her first visit to Southern California was to attend a church convention.

Delighted with the area, she and her two daughters moved here in the late 1950s and she bought a motel at Washington Boulevard and La Brea Avenue.

It not only became their first Los Angeles home but has since become a care facility for the developmentally disabled with a church on the property.

Soon Mrs. McClaney (whose husband stayed in Pittsburgh) began acquiring properties in South-Central Los Angeles and elsewhere, commercial land among them.

Holmby Hills Residents

The McClaneys and her mother eventually moved to Holmby Hills where they delighted in being described as “the hired help” by the bus guides who brought tourists to stare at the palatial mansions and residents of the area.

At her death the family held more than 20 parcels of valuable Los Angeles real estate and was continuing to buy and sell property while giving away much of the profit to charities.

A funeral service will be held at 10 a.m. Wednesday at the Second Baptist Church on Griffith Avenue in Los Angeles.

Mrs. McClaney is survived by her daughter, La-Doris, and her mother, Joanna Hendricks. Her elder daughter Burnie died in 1985 of lung cancer and the family is asking donations to the American Lung Assn.