Honoring the Couple Whom The Shoe Fits

If the shoe fits, wear it.

Nearly 100 gathered Friday at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel to honor Charles and Nora Hester with the Glass Slipper Award from the Cinderella Guild of Childrens Hospital of Orange County.

Jim Bentley, of Newport Beach, host of the $1,000-a-couple dinner with his wife, Irene, presented the award--a crystal paperweight in a cloth Gucci bag. He noted that Charles Hester has served on the hospital’s board of directors for eight years, and has been president for three, and that he and Nora have been longtime supporters of the Cinderella Guild.

Nora said that, of all her husband’s charitable endeavors, the hospital is one of his favorites.

Charles Hester glowed at the opportunity to discuss his association with the Cinderella Guild: “CHOC has a total of 16 guilds, made up of 1,500 members,� he explained. “Each guild generally has 100 members. Last year, all the guilds together contributed $500,000. The Cinderella Guild, which only has 40 members, raised over $100,000.�

Hester is working with Bob Guggenheim on an $8-million hospital building campaign; so far, $4.7 million has been raised, according to the guild president, Lynn Cancilla.

Each table at the dinner held an enormous arrangement of pink and white roses, carnations, daisies and irises. These centerpieces were taken home as door prizes, and a small bouquet adorned each place setting. (Among the other door prizes were two nights at the Ritz-Carlton, won by Irvine Co. President Tom Nielsen and his wife, Marilyn.)

Music and Dancing

A violin-accordion duo went from table to table, playing requests; dance music was by Joe Moshay and his band.

Most of those attending the affair were underwriters of the guild’s Designs for Dining benefit in April. Others included longtime friends of the honored couple, such as Bob McIntyre, president of the Southern California Gas Co., who said he has known Hester for 30 years.

Hester’s daughters, Marilyn Gianulias and Charlene Immell, were there, as were committee members Bette Dobrott and Jean Mahoney, and Francis Stawicki, coordinator of the hospital guilds.

Celebrating lower decibels with a markedly higher-decibel party down the hall from the CHOC dinner Friday night were 400 friends of AirCal--including several county supervisors and half a dozen mayors and assemblymen.

The occasion was the delivery of the first Boeing 737-300 airliner.

“It’s 8 to 10 decibels lower than the nearest competitor, the DC 980, which we’re using now,� said theAirCal chairman and president, William Lyon, who added that he personally flew the aircraft out of the Seattle Boeing plant in a snowstorm.

(In tests Saturday, 10 days after the Board of Supervisors adopted an incentive plan to promote use of quieter jets at John Wayne Airport, AirCal tentatively qualified for an increase in the number of its departures when the Boeing 737 met stricter noise standards. Lyon said he hopes to get the supervisors’ approval to start using the planes by April 1.)

Highlights of the evening included gently teasing remarks from Lyon and AirCal’s vice chairman, George Argyros.

“It’s my pleasure to introduce my partner and close friend,� said Lyon. “We’ve been through a lot over the last four years. And, of course, you know right away who I’m talking about.

“George and Judie have a very special relationship. They’re both in love with the same man.� (When the laughter died down, he added, “Well, that seems to have been worth at least one decibel.�)

Argyros expressed his concern over the noise issue, adding that AirCal is “absolutely committed to doing everything we can to make Tom Riley’s life as pleasant as we possibly can.�

Supervisor Riley laughed, along with fellow county board members Harriett Wieder and Bruce Nestande. Other guests included Mayors Don Roth of Anaheim, Norma Herzog of Costa Mesa, Dan Griset of Santa Ana and David Sills of Irvine. Assemblymen Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) and Nolan Frizzelle (R-Fountain Valley), Airport Commission member Dave Prebish and John Wayne Airport manager Murry Cable also attended.

They came by the busload from Palm Springs: Nearly a quarter of the 200 guests at a dinner given Thursday night by Newport Harbor Art Museum trustee Jack Shea and his wife, Marion, were the couple’s neighbors in the desert.

In brief remarks before the meal, (catered by the museum’s Sculpture Garden Cafe) Shea thanked them all for coming to help celebrate the opening of the “Six in Bronze� exhibition.

“But don’t let anybody tell you they came for any reason except to get warm,� he added, noting that four inches of snow had fallen on Palm Springs the previous weekend.

Family Affair

Shea, president of Beacon Bay Enterprises, which underwrote the exhibition, also thanked the company’s officers for coming, among them his daughter and board secretary Kathy Shea, and vice presidents Earl Thomas (“my wife’s cousin�), Michael Shea and Patrick Shea (“who are also related�).

“Other than that,� he said, “we don’t allow any nepotism at all.�

Phyllis Tuchman, curator of the traveling exhibition, offered some observations about “Six in Bronze.�

“Working in bronze is a reflection of our very conservative times,� Tuchman noted, “yet these works have also built on the ‘60s and ‘70s. There is a restoration of feeling that was lost, but not the excess of feeling of so many young artists.

“Two of the ‘Six’ in this exhibition are abstract, two work in a medium ground and two are frankly representational. Anyone who doesn’t find an artist they like here would bring to mind, ‘It’s not that they know what they like, they know what they don’t like.’ �

Other dinner guests included Alfred Leslie, whose watercolors “100 Views Along the Road,� hang in the museum’s Irvine and Hester galleries, sculptor Zadik Zadikian, whose works are part of the New California Artist series, museum trustees president Ray Johnson and wife, Linda, director Kevin Consey, curator Paul Schimmel and operations manager Richard Tellinghuisen.

“Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.�

That is the motto of Special Olympians, youngsters who, while they may or may not be physically handicapped, must be mentally handicapped to compete.

Jane West, California Special Olympics director of development, was a guest at an intimate cocktail party given by Torch Lighters, the first fund-raising auxiliary for the event, Wednesday evening in the Santa Ana Heights home of Bob Lintz.

According to West, there are 33,000 Special Olympics athletes in the state; CSO serves 1,200 in Orange County. “But for every one we serve,� she said, “there are hundreds more we want to reach.�

West explained that participants compete locally--in gymnastics, baseball, swimming, track, winter sports--but not necessarily the best go on to the finals.

‘Everybody Gets a Chance’

“Maybe they go on this year and don’t go on the next year,� she said. “Everybody gets a chance, and everybody gets a medal. Medals aren’t given out in order of who finished first.

“Winning isn’t it at Special Olympics; participating and trying is it. Striving is it, because, for the special athletes, that alone is a victory.�

Following a slide presentation on the ’84 Summer Games at UC Berkeley, Torch Lighters president Gisela Jenkins thanked guest Tom Nielsen for the $5,000 check he presented in December on behalf of the Irvine Co. to CSO president Rafer Johnson, and announced Torch Lighters’ first ball, April 21 at the Newport Marriott Hotel.

Emcee of the ball will be Jim Villers, who introduced himself to West after the slide show. The two had last seen each other 25 years ago, when they were students at West Virginia University.

Torch Lighters board members Barbara Freundt, Janet Corbin, Charley Schwenk, Mary Johnson, Ingeborg Benner, Trudi Phillips, Karen Smith and Tanya Harbour also attended.