After Mr. Ertegun died in 2006 from injuries suffered in a fall backstage at a Rolling Stones concert in Manhattan, his wife continued the couple’s philanthropic works. In 2015, his $9 million donation created an atrium for Jazz at Lincoln Center. In 2017, its $1.4 million commitment restored a substructure beneath the 4th-century Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, a site where, according to Christian traditions, the body of Christ was been buried. In recognition of this gift, she was named Grand Commander of the Holy Sepulcher by the Patriarch of Jerusalem.
His $41 million gift for humanities scholarships at Oxford University in 2012 was the largest of its kind in Oxford’s 900 years. In 2017, in recognition of her services to philanthropy, education and Anglo-American cultural relations, Queen Elizabeth II made her a honorary commander of the Order of the British Empire.
“For Ahmet and for me, one of the great joys of life has been the study of history, music, languages, literature, art and archaeology,” said Mrs. Ertegun at the time. “I believe it is extremely important to support those things that endure over time and make the world a more humane place. »
Mica Ertegun was born Ioana Maria Banu in Bucharest, Romania on October 21, 1926, the only daughter of Natalia Gologan and Dr. Gheorghe Banu. His father, who served in a cabinet of King Carol II in the 1930s, was close to King Michael I during World War II, when Romania was at times allied with Hitler. Amid Allied air raids, Mica, as her German nurse called her, was sent to the family’s country estate.
In January 1948, after the king was forced to abdicate and her father was imprisoned by the new communist government, Mica and Stefan Grecianu, an aristocrat 15 years her senior whom she had married at the age of 16, were put on a train carrying the exiled royal family. Traveling on stateless refugee passports, the couple arrived in Zurich penniless.
Friends hosted them for a year in the majestic Dolder Grand Hotel, overlooking the Swiss Alps. Others paid their way to Paris, where Mica got modeling jobs to support them. Later, other friends lent them money to move to Canada. They settled on a farm on Lake Ontario, where Mica helped for eight years collect, wash and box eggs from 5,000 chickens.