Ann Kerr a ‘force of nature’ at 90: Warriors coach’s mom imparts Middle East wisdom at UCLA

LOS ANGELES — Ann Kerr stood in a small classroom at UCLA, sharing snippets of her remarkable life story to an attentive audience.

Twenty-two freshmen, including several from the Bay Area, enrolled in the weekly one-unit seminar, “U.S. Values vs. U.S. Interests in Greater Middle East diplomacy.” On this day, the second class of the fall quarter, Kerr asked the students to introduce themselves and explain their interest in the topic.

Then she offered her own background, how a college junior from Southern California took a 17-day freighter voyage to Beirut to study abroad in 1954. How she connected with four Arabic roommates, one each from Palestine, Jerusalem, Lebanon and Iraq. How her decadeslong fixation with the Middle East has enriched her life and also brought enduring heartbreak.

Kerr purposely doesn’t mention this to her students: One of her four adult kids is Steve Kerr, head coach of the Golden State Warriors.

Ann turned 90 in August, a landmark worthy of an exuberant family celebration but not enough to slow her down. She still coordinates the Visiting Fulbright Scholar program at the UCLA International Institute. She still teaches every quarter. She still pours her time and abundant energy into “connecting cultures and people,” as Steve put it.

“She’s just this force of nature,” he said.

All the while, her son counts as one of the most politically engaged figures in sports. Steve Kerr long has been an advocate for gun safety, calling for universal background checks and other “sensible legislation.” He drifted into a new frontier this summer when he spoke at the Democratic National Convention, nine days after guiding the U.S. men’s basketball team to the Olympic gold medal in Paris.

The roots of Steve Kerr’s political engagement, and wider sense of the world, trace to his parents, Malcolm and Ann. Malcolm Kerr’s life is well-documented — he was a distinguished UCLA professor and Middle East scholar who fulfilled a lifelong dream when he became president of American University of Beirut, or AUB. He was assassinated outside his office in January 1984, at age 52.

But Ann’s journey also has shaped Steve and his three siblings in a profound way. She rebuilt her life after Malcolm’s death, accelerating plans to pursue a career in education. Ann taught at American University of Cairo before returning to Los Angeles, where she has spent more than 30 years trying to bring together people from around the world.

“I still have a mission,” Ann said this month at her home in Pacific Palisades, a neighborhood in Los Angeles. “It’s crazy, because so far it hasn’t done a bit of good.”

She was referring to the war between Israel and Hamas, a violent conflict threatening to expand throughout the Middle East. That’s the tragic context for Kerr’s seminar, which explores the history of the region and U.S. involvement there.

Her involvement is intensely personal. She met Malcolm while she studied at AUB and he was a graduate student. His history at the school stretched deep: His American parents both worked there for decades, and he essentially grew up on the picturesque campus with sweeping views of the Mediterranean Sea.

Steve Kerr and two of his siblings were born in Beirut, as the family bounced between Los Angeles and the Middle East. Ann Kerr has since settled in California, running the Fulbright program since 1991 and teaching the class promoting international understanding since the early 2000s, at the chancellor’s behest after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Every fall, Kerr focuses on current events in the Middle East in a historical context. In the winter and spring quarters, she brings in various Fulbright scholars from around the world for a course titled, “Perceptions of the U.S. Abroad: Discussions with Visiting Fulbright Scholars.”

She’s still passionate about forging these connections between people of different backgrounds, a cause she ties to her longtime affiliation with American University of Beirut (she remains an emeritus trustee on the school’s board).

“That’s really what keeps me going,” Ann Kerr said. “I wouldn’t be nearly as interested in Lebanon if it weren’t for AUB and everything it stands for … what we hope our country stands for, what we’d like our values to be.”

Asked specifically what AUB represents, she said, “Internationalism, globalism, reaching out rather than reaching in. Essentially, that’s what we’re electing now, somebody who is going to be aware of the rest of the world and work together, or someone who wants to pull in and send all the non-Americans back on a bus.”

She briefly caught her breath, upset, one of the only times during the Chronicle’s daylong visit that she shared her political opinion.

Steve Kerr sat inside a comfortable room at Chase Center, reflecting on his childhood.

His parents enforced a no-television rule Monday through Thursday, a ban he jokingly labeled “one of the greatest injustices anybody ever imposed on another human being.” The rule’s one exception: The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, a PBS show covering current events, played in the background every night.

Steve Kerr, 59, also retrospectively feigned anger about his mom’s habit of joining Malcolm at the annual UCLA-USC football game. Steve and his brothers were avid sports fans, unlike Ann, and often accompanied their dad to other UCLA events (as a faculty member, he had two season tickets for football and basketball). But she enjoyed the electric atmosphere at the crosstown rivalry, so she tagged along with a copy of the latest New Yorker magazine in hand.

Politics always were top of mind in the Kerr home. Steve recalled Malcolm’s euphoria when the Camp David Accords led to a historic peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979. He also remembered voting for George McGovern in a second-grade mock vote in 1972, because he heard his parents talking about doing the same (Steve also noted Richard Nixon won in a landslide, at school and in the real presidential election).

More than anything, Steve reflected on the distinctive, multicultural barbecues his parents routinely hosted. His dad’s UCLA colleagues from all over the world were there, as were his mom’s international friends. The Kerr kids — Susan, John, Steve and Andrew — heard many different languages and many different global perspectives.

Steve was quiet in his youth, but he figures the family dinner-table conversations and those long-ago barbecues planted the seeds for his public voice today. 

“I was naturally very shy, so I listened more than I spoke growing up,” he said. “I didn’t really know what I was seeing, but I heard all these conversations and I just witnessed my parents’ values and my family’s values, over and over again.

“So I think through osmosis eventually, I had a platform and some confidence to speak. I spoke up, but that was probably 50 years in the making.”

His sister and brothers similarly absorbed the environment around them. Susan van de Ven is a local politician in England; John is a Michigan State professor in the department of community sustainability (researching international agricultural development); and Andrew is chief operating officer of a design-build company in Washington, D.C., and has spent time on Capitol Hill advocating for victims of state-sponsored terrorism.

Ann Kerr likes to joke of her kids, “I have two PhDs, one MBA and one NBA.”

She savors their connection to each other, a bond forged in part through memorable family driving trips around the Middle East. Susan called them “electrifying adventures,” though it was hardly easy travel. The family circumnavigated the Mediterranean over a few years, as she put it, in a succession of Volkswagen campers.

Those odysseys, and their parents’ frequent stories of their history in Lebanon, made a lasting impact on the kids. Malcolm and his family fled the country for the U.S. during World War II, a journey that took nearly a year. Steve made a harrowing departure from Lebanon on his last visit in 1983, just before his freshman year at Arizona and only months before Malcolm was killed.

“I think the awareness of the world out there was very strong for all of us,” Susan said in a phone interview from China, where her husband is a visiting professor. “You have to start thinking about what’s going on around you and why. It’s stating the obvious, but my dad was killed for political reasons.

“The most life-changing thing that ever happened was for political reasons, so it absolutely politicized me.”

Malcolm’s death politicized Susan to the point she wrote a book, “One Family’s Response to Terrorism,” about the Kerrs’ successful lawsuit against Iran (members of what became Hezbollah claimed responsibility for his killing). The family decided to use the financial award to fund scholarships for international graduate students in social sciences and humanities at UCLA. 

Steve’s politicization became evident long ago, though it gained new cachet Aug. 19 in Chicago. That’s where he delivered his nearly seven-minute speech at the Democratic convention, as Ann and the rest of the Kerr clan watched during a family reunion at Big Bear Lake, ahead of Ann’s birthday bash. (Steve joined them the next day.)

He spoke passionately in support of Kamala Harris, extolling the need for dignified and honest leadership. Kerr also sprinkled in some humor, ending with a reference to Warriors guard Stephen Curry’s signature “night-night” gesture in regard to former President Donald Trump.

“I loved it,” Ann said of the speech. “I was proud, and I thought, ‘Good, those are just the values I hoped my kids would learn.’ … He inherited that wonderful ability to speak with humor (from Malcolm), sometimes deprecatingly of himself and others.”

One notable subject Steve Kerr did not tackle: the situation in the Middle East. He has absorbed some criticism for not addressing the war there, given his family’s history in the region, but he’s following Ann’s advice. 

Extremism killed his dad, so his mom doesn’t want Steve to expose himself to the same danger. 

Ann struggles enough with the horrors of the Israel-Hamas war. She keeps in touch with several friends in Beirut and Jerusalem, and they all have trouble going to sleep at night because of the threat of bombs dropping. 

“It’s just so depressing,” she said softly.

Grace Funk found herself in Ann Kerr’s 11th-floor office at Bunche Hall, struggling to digest the message.

Funk, a 22-year-old UCLA senior from Fullerton, took Kerr’s class as a freshman. She grew enamored of the woman more than four times her age, soon becoming her student assistant. Funk joins Kerr in the office three afternoons each week to help her manage the Fulbright program and prepare for her class.

Funk was confused the first time Kerr abruptly said, “I’m going to do the stairs.” Kerr saw Funk’s quizzical expression and explained, “I’ve been sitting too long. It’s good to get some movement.” 

So she took the elevator down and then walked back up the stairs.

“I was like, ‘All 11 floors?!’” Funk said.

Ann Kerr regularly swims at Palisades High School, plays tennis twice a week and hikes in the canyon behind her house. She eagerly grabbed a rope tied to one of the trees on her property during the Chronicle’s visit, swinging and giggling like she was 9. She traveled to China this month to visit Susan and will head to New York next month for an AUB board meeting.

She also keeps a busy social life, having dinner with friends or going to the opera or symphony. Kerr kept the opera tickets she shared with her second husband, Ken Adams, who died in 2017. She also takes occasional trips to Pacific Grove (Monterey County) to visit her sister Jane.

Susan, 65, and John, 62, both plan to retire in the years ahead, prompting a family joke: Ann will visit them in their retirement homes if her schedule allows.

“I’m mindful of the example she sets of being physically active, intellectually active and having this agency to make a difference,” Susan said. “We all have that ability, but it’s not something we necessarily think about and it makes an enormous difference in day-to-day motivation.”

Or, as Ann said, “I don’t know why I got to be 90, but I’m very glad I did. It’s a funny number. I’m essentially doing most of the things I’ve always done.”

Her home offers tangible evidence of a full, adventurous life. Ann’s water color paintings of various Middle East and African countries — Lebanon, Tunisia, Yemen — dot the walls.

In the hallway, she displays portraits of all four Kerr kids in their teenage years. In the bathroom, a school painting Steve did at age 8 still adorns one wall.

And on a kitchen door hangs this season’s Warriors schedule, with their four games in Los Angeles circled. Ann typically brings her Fulbright scholars to at least one of Golden State’s games against the Lakers or Clippers, featuring a short talk from the head coach she happens to know.

That coach marvels at his mom’s resilience, dating to the unspeakable tragedy more than 40 years ago. 

“Obviously we all lost our dad, but losing your husband at 49 and facing the rest of your life …” Steve said, momentarily trailing off. “And what she’s done with her life, all she has accomplished impacting people around her, I’m so proud of her.”

Those Fulbright field trips to Warriors games might count as an annual highlight, but they can’t compare with the party at Ann’s house on Aug. 24. Nearly 100 people gathered in her honor, including all four kids, eight grandkids and three great-grandkids. It was a rare chance for Ann to enjoy her entire family in the same place.

She had one requirement: They were all going to learn how to waltz. She hired two professional dancers and a string duet and off they went on the expansive brick patio in back. 

“It was just because I love to dance,” Ann said. “And I thought, ‘OK, a command performance is easy for my 90th birthday. They have to do it.’”

She paused briefly, a twinkle in her eyes.

“You can write that,” she said.

Reach Ron Kroichick: rkroichick@sfchronicle.com; X: @ronkroichick