ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Grande Dame

Her daughter aptly called Athalie R. Clarke the “grande dame of Orange County,” and when she died last Saturday at 90, she left a legacy of causes well served and a county whose topography she helped shape.

Clarke fought some tough battles at a time when most people expected a woman mainly to stay out of sight. She cared for two husbands and her mother in final illnesses. It was her first husband, James Irvine III, who provided the conditions that enabled her to build her special place in Orange County. Irvine’s father had worked the magic that turned 108,000 acres of chaparral into a county of wealth, a landscape filled with citrus and lima beans.

Irvine and Clarke, a doctor’s daughter who worked as a commercial artist and taught at a Los Angeles art school, married in 1929. The couple lived on the Irvine Ranch, which covered about one-fifth of what is now Orange County. After Irvine’s death in 1935, she married U.S. District Judge Thurmond Clarke.

Athalie Clarke was long active in Republican politics and in philanthropy. She was a board member of the Irvine Co. and pushed it to develop a master plan for its property, including what became the city of Irvine and a University of California campus. She and her daughter, Joan Irvine Smith, donated generously to the school--$3 million in the last two years alone.

Although immensely rich, Clarke shunned an idle life of luxury, serving as a trustee of several universities and museums. She shared her wealth, and Orange County is better because of her.