With Walt Disney, Kroc pretended to be 15 years old to work as a Red Cross ambulance driver during World War I. He enlisted just before the conflict came to an end.

Kroc held several professions during the Great Depression, including selling paper cups, acting as a real estate agent in Florida, and occasionally playing the piano in bands.

Kroc was born on October 5, 1902, to Czech-American parents Rose Mary (1881–1959) and Alois “Louis” Kroc in Oak Park, Illinois, close to Chicago (1879–1937).

In Horn Stupno, a district of Basy not far from Rokycany, Alois was born. Her paternal grandpa Josef Kotilnek was from Boice, while Rose’s father Vojtch was from even.

Alois built a fortune investing in the land after coming to America in the 1920s, only to lose it all in the 1929 stock market crash.

Ray Kroc’s cause of death: How did Ray Kroc die?

Following a stroke in 1980, Kroc checked himself into a rehab center for alcohol abuse. He was 81 years old when he passed away from heart failure four years later in a hospital in San Diego, California.

He was laid to rest at the El Camino Memorial Park in Sorrento Valley, San Diego.

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