Dorothy E. Risley Leavey was an American philanthropist and co-founder of the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Foundation.
Dorothy Risley was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1897. She grew up in Cleveland, Chicago and Butte, Montana. She attended the University of Montana and worked as a legal secretary before moving to California. In 1930, she married Thomas E. Leavey, co-founder of Farmers Insurance Group. The couple had two children: Kathleen and Dorothy Therese. She performed volunteer work for the Assistance League in Hollywood and for the Ladies of Charity.
In 1952, she and Thomas founded the Leavey Foundation. The foundation has donated more than $100 million to educational, medical and other Catholic causes.
For her generosity, the Catholic Church honored her as a dame of the Order of St. Gregory, a dame of the Knights of Malta, and a dame of Magistral Grace.
She earned four honorary degrees -- from the University of Southern California, Santa Clara University, Georgetown University and Loyola Marymount University.
Dorothy Leavey died in January 1998 at the age of 101. Her husband Thomas pre-deceased her in 1980. Her younger daughter Terry (Dorothy Therese) was killed in an automobile accident in 1979. She was survived by her daughter Kathleen L. McCarthy, nine grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.[1]