Roxie Moradian: The Heart of Fresno

A lifelong philanthropist in the San Joaquin Valley city of Fresno, Roxie Moradian was charming and sophisticated—the only woman in town known to wear a red Coco Chanel pantsuit. She was also plainspoken, gregarious, and infectiously joyful, making friends wherever she went. When Roxie died in 2017 at the age of 103, she and her husband Frank left a portion of their estates totaling $2.2 million to establish an endowment benefiting UCSF School of Medicine and UCSF Fresno.

“You could take her to a baseball game and she’d fit right in,” says her trustee and surrogate son, Mike Nicoletti. “Or, if she were sitting next to the queen of England, she’d know just what to do and say.”

Roxie was like a bolt of lightning, Nicoletti adds, the perfect complement to Frank’s quiet and dignified demeanor. During their lifetimes, the Moradians donated to medical research and education for nearly 40 years. They supported the UCSF Chancellor’s Fund and other programs, in 1985 earning the UCSF Medal—the campus’s most prestigious award—and later joining the Heritage Circle, UCSF’s legacy society.

They also helped build the Fresno community and enrich its cultural life, cofounding the Fresno Arts Center (now the Fresno Art Museum), the Fresno Philharmonic, and the San Joaquin Valley Town Hall lecture series. In the 1970s, when local activists advocated for a medical school in Fresno, the Moradians joined the campaign—helping to establish the UCSF Fresno Medical Education Program.

“Roxie’s name has got to be all around Fresno,” says former UCSF Fresno associate dean John Blossom, MD. “She gave back, on a grand scale, to almost everything.”

The daughter of Armenian immigrants, she grew up in nearby Selma—where her father made his fortune by inventing a grape-bleaching machine that produced the “golden raisin.” She relished the times her family piled into their Ford Model T to drive to downtown Fresno for a day of shopping at Gottschalk’s, where she later became a model. She moved to Fresno to learn typing and shorthand and study history at Fresno State, and she never left.

Roxie married Frank Moradian when he was a young clerk at Fresno’s Penny-Newman Grain Company, which to this day manufactures dairy feed and sells grains. In 1943 she used her family inheritance to help Frank purchase the company. The couple enjoyed life, traveling the world, collecting art, and hosting famous guests—including Charlie Chaplain, the dancer Rudolph Nureyev, and the writer William Saroyan—at their home on the Fresno bluffs.

“Roxie and Frank had no children; and when he was in his 60s, he started looking for some young blood to help with the company,” says Nicoletti, a Bay Area accountant who was introduced to Frank by a mutual associate as a possible successor. “We really hit it off, and Frank mentored me to take over the business. He became like a father to me.” After Frank died in 1987, Nicoletti worked with Roxie to purchase Penny-Newman and maintained a lifelong relationship with her.

As a widow Roxie ramped up her giving, making dozens of gifts to UCSF and UCSF Fresno, helping to fund cancer and Alzheimer’s research, clinical and translational studies, and a new campus library. She donated generously to local schools, hospitals, cultural centers, and charities, including Fresno State, the Fresno Ballet, and the Fresno Rescue Mission.

Of her philanthropy, she once said, “Why should I keep it if I can help? I just wanted to do something for Fresno.”