Heiress’ $17-Million Trust to Benefit UCI and the Arts
An Orange County heiress now living in Palm Desert is setting up a $17-million trust to benefit UC Irvine, the Orange County Performing Arts Center, South Coast Repertory and other artistic groups in what will eventually be the largest private donation in the university’s 24-year history.
The gift, which is to be formally announced today at a press conference at UCI, is being made by Edra E. Brophy. Her father was William Cheney, co-founder of Farmers Insurance Group, which was acquired recently by a London-based company in a $5.2-billion buyout.
“I wanted to do something for Orange County, the place I consider home,” Brophy said in a telephone interview from her Palm Desert home. “I grew up there, went to school and raised my family there.”
UCI’s College of Medicine ultimately will get $8.5 million from what will be set up as a trust, according to Linda Granell, a spokeswoman for UCI. The trust will be managed by the UCI College of Medicine Foundation, a nonprofit, fund-managing arm of the university.
The terms of the trust call for the Brophy family to receive interest income from it for 20 years, after which the $17-million principal will be disbursed to the College of Medicine and the other beneficiaries.
Brophy, who was born in 1912 in a small farmhouse not far what is now the UCI campus, said the county has changed dramatically, and not all for the better. She said traffic, crime and the “general hustle and bustle” of today’s Orange County prompted her to sell her Santa Ana home last year and move permanently to the desert.
“It’s quieter here,” she said. “I don’t have to drive far to the market or the mall. But for lots of people, particularly families, Orange County is a good place to live. I hope this money helps the quality of life there. . . . “
Brophy, 76, said she decided with her son, William J. Gillespie of Newport Beach, which groups would benefit from the trust. The primary criterion, she said, was that each recipient had to be based in the county.
Center to Get $5.1 Million
Granell on Tuesday said that the Performing Arts Center is scheduled to receive $5.1 million from the trust, and South Coast Repertory, $1.7 million. (The largest previous single gift to the Performing Arts Center was from the Segerstrom family of Costa Mesa for the land and $6 million to build the center.)
Granell said the Orange County Philharmonic Society will receive $1.19 million from the trust at the end of 20 years, and the Pacific Chorale will get $510,000.
The largest previous single private donation to UCI was in 1982, when the Mabel and Arnold Beckman Foundation gave $2.5 million to the university, according to Granell.
University officials, while confirming information about the trust, declined to comment pending the press conference, which is scheduled for 10 a.m. today in the University Club on campus.
In a statement scheduled to be released this morning, UCI Chancellor Jack Peltason says: “In this year of Orange County’s centennial celebration, we reflect upon the progress that has been made not only at UCI but throughout the county. For UCI, the Brophy gift serves to acknowledge the many advances that have been made in medicine and other fields and heightens our awareness of breakthroughs which have yet to be made.”
Honors Her Parents
The trust, Brophy said, has been established in the names of her parents, William and Eva Cheney, who settled in the county in 1904.
Soon after, Brophy’s father, a stout, immensely popular man, became a successful bean and grain grower, leasing 960 acres on what is now the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station.
By 1918, Cheney had formed a partnership with James B. Utt of Tustin, who went on to become a congressman in 1952 and who died March 1, 1970, still in office. They operated a citrus and nursery business, according to Orange County historian Jim Sleeper.
Brophy, a graduate of Tustin High School, said that her father lost “most of his orange groves” after the stock market crash in 1929. “It was a tough time, because he had worked so hard and then lost it all,” she recalled.
However, by the early 1930s, her father, who became a Santa Ana councilman, and three others founded Farmer’s Insurance Group, which was purchased recently by Batus Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of London-based BAT Industries. Brophy, declining to disclose specifics, said she has “benefited comfortably” from the Farmer’s buyout.
The size of the $17-million trust, Brophy said, is expected to grow upon her death. She would not say by how much, but added: “It will be a lot.”
Times staff writer Mark Pinsky contributed to this story.
