Joan Irvine Smith

Joan Irvine Smith in 1937

Born as Athalie Anita Irvine, she was the only child of James Harvey Irvine, Jr. and Athalie Richardson. Her father died when she was 2 years old, and her grandfather, James Irvine II, died in 1947 and she inherited a minority share of the Irvine Company.[1] She lived in Beverly Hills with her mother and her second husband after she remarried in 1938.[2] Her mother married again in 1944 to Judge Thurmond Clarke.[3]

She studied at Westridge School, a private girls school in Pasadena, later dropping out from Marymount College and also attended UC Berkeley for one year.[1]

In 1952 she married Charles Swinden in Rancho San Joaquin, with the ceremony being officiated by her stepfather, Judge Thurmond Clarke.[4] They had a son together, James Irvine Swinden, born in 1953.[5] After their divorce she married three more times.

Joan Irvine Smith died on 19 December 2019.[6]

Irvine Smith had a complicated relationship with the Irvine Company and the Irvine Foundation, becoming the major shareholder but suing for more shares for herself and three cousins.[7]

In July 1962 she also sued the Irvine Company for $1,200,000 for alleged losses in a real estate transaction where the a 146-acre parcel in Orange County was exchanged for agricultural land in Imperial County.[8] She held a press conference to announce the filing of this suit at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco.[9]

She pushed for using Irvine Co. lands for urban development.[10]

Joan Irvine Smith played an important role in the creation of the University of California, Irvine (UCI), both in site selection and the donation of 1,000 acres of land from Irvine Co. According to UCI's Chancellor Howard Gillman "without Joan Irvine Smith there likely would not be a University of California, Irvine".[11] Along with the President of the University of California, Dr Clark Kerr, she talked about the progress and the project in industrial conferences, talking about the effort as "directed imagination".[12]

She also helped establish the Reeve-Irvine Research Center at UC Irvine, a spinal cord injury research center named for actor Christopher Reeve, who was paralyzed after a riding accident.[13]

Joan Irvine Smith contributed to different institutions and causes, such as donating to the building fund of her former school, Westridge, with the new building named the "Joan Irvine Library-Study Hall".[14] Together with her mother she founded the "Joan Irvine Smith and Athalie R. Clarke Foundation" which, for example, gifted $1 million to UC Irvine's School of Law library.[15] One of the main focus of this foundation was conservation, with the establishment of the National Water Research Institute and its yearly Athalie Richardson Irvine Clarke Prize award for leaders in the water sector.[16]

Along with her mother and son, James Irvine Swinden, she created the Irvine Museum in 1992, hiring Jean Stern as its first executive director.[17] In 2016 the museum collection of 1,200 California Impressionist paintings were gifted to UC Irvine, for the establishment of a university museum.[18]

Joan Irvine Smith learned to ride from a young age and became a recognized breeder, owning three ranches all called The Oaks, in Virginia, San Juan Capistrano, and Valley Center.[19][20] She bred Holsteiner jumper horses, aiming to create an American sport horse to compete with European ones. When her stallion, called South Pacific, died of a rare disease caused by parasite Halicephalobus deletrix, Irvine Smith claimed it had been purposely infected and hired a private investigator.[21]

• Mary Lowther Ranney Distinguished Alumna Award, Westridge School (2001).[22]