SANTA ANA – He was remembered as a visionary leader, a charismatic businessman with a “unique, off-center take” on life who could poke fun at someone else just as easily as himself.
Donald P. Kennedy, the longtime leader of Santa Ana’s First American Corp. title company, possessed a calm, unassuming demeanor that belied his legacy as one of Orange County’s great philanthropists, family and friends said Sunday at a celebration of his life at Santa Ana’s Bowers Museum of Cultural Art. Kennedy died March 24 at age 93.
Related: Kennedy grew family business into financial powerhouse
“What he did with that business can only be described in one word – monumental,” said longtime friend Sandy Tatum, who met Kennedy in college at Stanford. “Orange County is a misnomer. It ought to be Kennedy County.”
Kennedy, a Santa Ana resident for most of his life, parlayed his remarkable successes at the helm of his family’s title insurance company into a variety of philanthropic endeavors, all designed to boost Orange County’s reputation in education and the arts, family members said.
He was a past chairman of the Orange County Business Committee for the Arts, a board member for South Coast Repertory and a key supporter of the law school at Chapman University in Orange.
A hall at Chapman’s law school is named after him, as is a wing at the Bowers Museum, where he was a past board chairman.
Sunday’s memorial services were attended by about 400 family, friends and colleagues, who gathered in a cavernous, sunlight-filled museum wing that – appropriately enough – bears his name and that of his wife of 66 years.
The $16 million Dorothy and Donald Kennedy Wing, which opened in 2007, added 30,000 square feet of exhibit space, doubling Bowers’ size.
“He was just bigger than life,” said Paul Johnson, the Bowers Museum’s vice president of exhibit design and installation. “He brought in the architects, he purchased (adjacent) land for our north parking lot, he covered the entire financial operation.”
Kennedy, who joined his family’s Orange County Title Company in 1948, extended its client base far beyond the county’s borders.
During his six decades at the helm, the company – which he renamed First American – grew from one generating less than $1 million in annual revenue to an international behemoth with $8 billion in earnings, said his son, Parker Kennedy.
Donald Kennedy took a hands-off approach to his management style, delegating effectively and instructing his managers to run the company “as if it were their own,” his son said.
As for hiring, Kennedy’s advice was: “Don’t hire anyone you wouldn’t have over to your house for dinner,” Parker Kennedy said.
“He could have written a great management book, but of course he thought management books were ridiculous,” Parker Kennedy said.
Kennedy and his wife dined out almost every night. Their favorite restaurant was Quinn’s, an American-Irish restaurant in downtown Tustin.
Kennedy, who always sat in a booth at the back of the restaurant, enjoyed watching sports on a TV across the room, but had a hard time seeing it from his vantage point, said Quinn’s owner John Moore.
So he started bringing in binoculars, Moore said.
Eventually, Kennedy told Moore he’d like to buy a TV for the restaurant. Moore protested, saying he could buy it himself, but Kennedy insisted.
“He said, ‘If it costs less than the wing at Chapman law school, then go ahead and order it – and it’s on me,'” Moore said.
On Sunday, Kennedy’s children shared some of their father’s sometimes embarrassing, but always hilarious attributes.
Never one to be on time, Kennedy once was so rushed driving to the airport to catch a flight that he called his secretary later to ask that she check up on his car. He couldn’t remember what he had done with it, Parker Kennedy said.
“It was parked in front of the departure area, door open, key in ignition, engine running,” Parker Kennedy said to laughs.
His older daughter, Elizabeth Kennedy Myers, recalled a time when she was a teenager driving with her father to a country club to play golf. When he arrived at his destination, he handed the keys to her and said, “Pick me up at 3,” Myers recalled.
“I said, ‘Dad, I don’t have a license. I don’t know how to drive,'” Myers said. “He said, ‘Sure, you do.’ I did it. It was thrilling and horrifying. … It was one of those things you weren’t supposed to tell anyone.”
Then, turning to her mother, Dorothy, in the audience, Myers added: “So Mom, now you know.”
Contact the writer: 949-454-7394 or smartindale@ocregister.com or Twitter: @MartindaleScott
