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But Cravens has received as much satisfaction and even greater recognition for helping young people in the Valley.
The Student Services Center at College of the Desert was named after Cravens and her husband, photo-journalist Don Cravens, for their $3.5 million donation to the school. She was president of the College of the Desert Foundation from 2000-2002 and remains a Board member of the COD Foundation today.
The school’s then president and superintendent, William Kroonen, called Cravens “a tireless worker dedicated to the welfare of the college and its students.”
Cravens grew up a singing prodigy in North Bergen, New Jersey. She made her first radio appearance when she was 3 years old, singing, “Silver Threads Among the Gold” on WHOM-New Jersey. At age 10, she was the national winner of the Major Bowes Amateur Hour, the 1940’s equivalent of “American Idol.”
She won an audition with the Theatre Guild two years later and was asked to join the national touring company of “Oklahoma!” Her father, however, insisted she stay in school.
Cravens worked in summer stock theater and trained with famed Metropolitan Opera baritone, John Brownlee, during high school. While still in high school she replaced Dorothy Morrow on Broadway in the 1950 Frank Loesser musical, “Where’s Charley?,” starring Ray Bolger. It led to a decade of touring on stage and in supper clubs, and appearing on television under the stage name Peggy Willard.
She sang with the Ray Charles Singers on “Perry Como’s Kraft Music Hall” TV show in the early 1960’s. Her Ray Charles was not the same Ray Charles who defined soul music. He was a white Ray Charles. But the African-American Ray Charles made a guest appearance using the Caucasian Ray Charles Singers. So, for one song, Peggy Cravens was a Raylette.
She left show business in 1961 after meeting New York investment banker Irving Koerner at a backer’s audition. She not only passed the audition, she became Mrs. Irving Koerner. Her new role called for her to host corporate clients and become more socially active. Soon Peggy Koerner was hosting charity events and becoming the women’s champion at Mamaroneck Golf Club in Westchester County, New York.
Among the major New York charity events she helped present were Frank Sinatra’s record setting benefits for the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center at the Metropolitan Opera and Rockefeller Center. She chaired a benefit for the Museum of the City of New York with Lillian Gish as the honorary chairwoman of a gala themed “Movies: New York.” She also was a supporter of the Metropolitan Opera and served on many Gala Committees for new productions at The Met.
She and Koerner began vacationing in Palm Springs in 1971. They joined Tamarisk County Club in 1978 and bought an apartment at the Desert Island high rise development in Rancho Mirage in 1981.
It was Irving Koerner’s onset of Alzheimer’s Disease that inspired his wife’s support of the Carlotta and Alzheimer’s charity groups. She placed him in the Carlotta in 1986. He died in 1991. She had to place her mother at the Carlotta convalescent home during that same period where she, also, passed away.
From her involvement in Carlotta fund-raising, she was introduced to numerous other non-profit organizations in the Coachella Valley.
Peggy Koerner met Donald Cravens, worlds-renowned photo-journalist, at the White House in Washington, D.C. while attending a Ford’s Theatre Foundation benefit. They married in 1992 and presently live in Rancho Mirage.
Their names are engraved in the Walk of Fame at the McCallum Theatre for their donations to that institution.
Peggy Cravens estimates that she spends four to five days a week attending meetings with local non-profit organizations. Her most important fund-raising efforts, she said, have been the campaigns for the College of the Desert, the Virginia Waring International Piano Competition, ACT for Multiple Sclerosis and the Alzheimer’s Association. But Peggy Cravens would like to be remembered as an aggressive fund-raiser for all of her endeavors. “If being aggressive means getting the job done, ” she clarified. “I don’t think I’ve been rude to anybody, but I get the job done.”
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