Obituaries : Florence Riford; UC San Diego Benefactor

Florence Seeley Riford, a major benefactor of San Diego and UC San Diego who vowed to give away the fortune she made investing in stocks and real estate, has died. She was 100.

Mrs. Riford died Friday at her apartment in La Jolla.

She had given more than $5 million to UC San Diego, becoming the university’s single leading individual donor.

Her largess to the university’s School of Medicine included the 1983 endowment of the Florence Riford Chair for Alzheimer’s Disease Research and the 1986 endowment of a faculty chair for AIDS research.

Mrs. Riford’s gifts included a $2-million piece of property on Draper Avenue to the city of San Diego for construction of a branch library in La Jolla; $1.1 million to the Rotary Club of La Jolla for college scholarships; $1.5 million to the Salvation Army to establish the mFlorence Riford Senior Club in La Jolla; $550,000 to the San Diego County animal shelter, and $200,000 to help construct a senior citizen center in her childhood home of Tonganoxie, Kan.

Many of Mrs. Riford’s gifts were in the form of accounts granting her lifetime interest income, with all principal and interest reverting to the recipients at her death.

Born in Wisconsin on July 12, 1892, Mrs. Riford married real estate investor Ira Riford in Chicago in 1923. They retired to La Jolla in 1941, and when Riford died 30 years ago he left his widow about $1 million.