Oarsmen Pilot Graceful Gifts
Maruja Baldwin was a certain type of Orange County woman.
She was thrice-married, a Newport Beach heiress who was friends with local scion Henry Segerstrom and his wife, Renee. In the 1950s, she achieved a small measure of fame by posing for Vogue magazine photos and with bit parts in the classic Hollywood movies “Designing Women” and “Gigi.”
And like many wealthy folk, Maruja, who died a year ago at 77, occasionally liked to give things away.
She donated the Toulouse-Lautrec paintings she inherited from her second husband, the late developer Baldwin M. Baldwin, to the San Diego Art Museum. She gave a giant silver winner’s cup to the Newport Harbor Yacht Club.
But Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa was her pet charity.
“There was a wonderful love affair between her and the college,” said former Orange Coast President David Grant, a friend of Baldwin’s for 30 years.
Especially the men’s rowing team, which she helped along in its success at winning championships and producing Olympic rowers.
Only recently did the college publicize its biggest gift from the wealthy widow. In 1993, she donated $1 million anonymously to the men’s rowing team, or crew, nicknamed the “Giant Killers” because in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s they beat several top national teams. It was the largest gift ever given to the college.
The gift capped the story of a romance of sorts between the eccentric millionaire and the team just across the bay from her home.
In a sense, the relationship continues. The last eight-oared shell she bought, a $25,000 racing beauty named Maruja II, is still in use, the team’s finest boat.
Grant said Baldwin walked into the boathouse in the early 1970s, examined the long, delicately crafted wooden boats and announced in her richly accented voice, “They are so beeyooteeful--I buy you one!”
Grant, then coach of the men’s crew team, glanced at her third husband, Newport Beach physician George Hodges, who was doing checkups on team members.
“Whatever Maruja wants,” Hodges said.
The first boat cost $3,500. She bought seven more through the years. She also became a regular, and striking, fixture at college functions.
“I remember when we dedicated the newly expanded theater, and she came,” said Orange Coast Foundation board Director Doug Bennett, who said Baldwin had donated $50,000 to that effort. “She had this kind of leopard-looking dress, bright yellow and black. She always had a black Bentley. There was a showy side to her.”
There also was an air of mystery.
“You never really knew with Maruja,” Grant said.
Every great once in a while, he said, she talked of her childhood in Costa Rica, growing up as an orphan in a convent after her mother died. But no one else knew the exact story.
Her daughter, Dana Baldwin, laughingly agreed.
“Oh, all these stories!” she said. “She wasn’t always really factual, but she created an air of mystery. She was kind of like a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel; she made things up as she went along. It was frustrating if you wanted the facts, but it was definitely part of her charm. She believed in magical realism.”
The daughter does believe it’s true that her mother, from a “good but poor” Costa Rican family, was largely raised by her four older siblings after both parents died. Her closest friend, both her daughter and Grant said, was a large monkey named Pancho. She did live at a boarding school run by nuns for several years.
She came to California in the 1940s at age 19 seeking fame and fortune, suitcase in hand, without a word of English. Tall and elegant, she had a successful European and American modeling career.
In her later years in Orange County, she still cut a striking figure.
Jim Carnett, spokesman for Orange Coast College, said: “She was not traditionally beautiful, but she was regal, elegant. . . . When she walked into a room, you knew she was there.”
Baldwin also provided scholarship funds for deserving Orange Coast oarsmen, who went on to Olympic rowing teams and to four-year schools such as Cornell, Stanford and UCLA, according to Jim Jorgensen, the community college’s men’s crew coach.
Grant, since retired both as coach and as president of the college, said Baldwin wanted to keep her $1-million gift, set up as a trust fund, anonymous until after her death, so other charities wouldn’t bother her.
“We were sitting, having dinner, and she said, ‘Davey, I want to do something special for the boys,’ ” Grant recalled. “When she said she wanted to give $1 million, I smiled. She said, ‘I’m serious.’ I said, ‘OK, that would be the most wonderful gift the college has ever received.’ ”
Grant said he was the only one who knew for quite a while.
“We really were her favorite,” he said, “I tell you, it works every time. People give where they are appreciated, and we appreciated Maruja a lot. And we showed it in a lot of ways.”
Through the years, Grant and Jorgensen said, banners were hung in her honor from the boathouse. Occasionally, after winning an important race, the men’s team would ride en masse across the bay to her home on Lido Isle to present her with the winner’s trophy. She would entertain them at a luncheon or reception. On her birthday, Nov. 19, she would stand on the balcony and be serenaded by the team. Of course, she never revealed her exact age.
“I love it. I love the boys,” Jorgensen recalled her gushing.
After she was widowed, Grant ordered a floral bouquet sent to her home once a month from the college.
“I told them, ‘I don’t care what it costs, you send her the biggest, best bouquet you can find,’ ” Grant said.
Baldwin, who preferred to use her second husband’s name, died of cancer Nov. 25, 1997.
Proceeds of $26,000 from the trust fund this year will be used to rebuild the wide wooden ramp leading from the boathouse to the water, and to rebuild pilings under the docks, Bennett said.
“I think there will always be a Maruja in the boathouse, as long as it stands,” Grant said.