Ann Clare Brokaw

Ann Clare Brokaw (April 25, 1924 – January 11, 1944, Palo Alto, Calif.) was the only child of Clare Boothe Brokaw (later Clare Boothe Luce) and George Tuttle Brokaw.

Her parents were married in August 1923 and divorced on May 20, 1929. Her father agreed to financial support for Clare and her mother, but in 1932 sued to have greater custody of Ann.^[1] Six months after her father's death in May 1935, her mother married Henry Luce, publisher of Time and Life magazines. Her stepfather insisted that Ann and the press refer to Luce as her father.^[2]

In June 1941, Brokaw (then 17) graduated cum laude from the Foxcroft School in Middleburg, Virginia. She was expected to attend an East Coast women's college such as Smith College or Bryn Mawr College, but instead elected to attend Stanford University as a way to see the western United States.^[3]

Brokaw enrolled in Stanford in fall 1941 and joined the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. She majored in political science and philosophy, and was scheduled to graduate summa cum laude in the spring of 1944.^[2][4]

However, on January 11, 1944, Brokaw was a passenger in a car that was struck by another car near the Stanford campus. The 19-year-old senior was ejected from the car and died of fatal head injuries.^[5] On her 21st birthday, Brokaw was entitled to inherit more than 25% of the multi-million dollar estate of her grandfather Isaac Vail Brokaw; the money instead went to her half-sister, Frances de Villers Brokaw.^[3][6]

Her mother was deeply grieved by the death of her only child, and after extensive counseling by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, in 1946 Clare Boothe Luce converted to the Catholic Church. As a memorial to her daughter, beginning in 1949 she funded the construction of a Catholic church in Palo Alto for use by the Stanford campus ministry. The new Saint Ann Chapel was dedicated in 1951. It was sold by the diocese in 1998 and in 2003 became a church of the Anglican Province of Christ the King.^[2]

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