Tales of Spirits and Skinny-Dippers : Inn’s Ghostly Last Supper Provides Taste of History

RIVERSIDE —  Bathed in moonlight and plagued by Murphy’s Law, the historic Mission Inn celebrated its last supper Saturday before closing its doors for a two-year, $28-million face-lift.

For most of the hundreds of current and former employees and guests who turned out, it was the last chance for a while to roam the mission-style hotel with its flying buttresses, ornate Gothic-style chapels, reflecting pools and tiled galleries leading to one-of-a-kind suites and overlooking a central fountain.

Plenty of Problems

Many offered a sentimental toast to the decaying national landmark that has been plagued by financial and managerial problems for much of its 80-year history.

For a handful of key employees, however, it was the end of a career at the magnificent jumble of architecture built by a local citrus grower that may yet become the centerpiece of a cultural and economic development in downtown Riverside.

“Roxanne, this is the last time I get to do it--so get it right,” Jane Margison urged the 3,000th bride she has escorted to the chapel doors in 14 years as the inn’s coordinator of weddings.

Alas, the wedding of Michael Cutcliff, a Riverside computer repairman, and Roxanne Robertson, a belly dancer and owner of a singing telegram business, was delayed 45 minutes. What’s more, the bride’s wedding ring was lost.

“I don’t know what happened to it” wailed Robertson outside the door of the St. Francis Chapel as a wedding party of more than 100 fidgeted in their seats.

A Time for Tears

“Murphy’s Law,” muttered the punctilious Margison, as she watched the blonde bride with a toothpaste-ad smile trample her long white train. Still, she could not hold back the tears when the couple finally said their “I do’s,” ending her career at the inn.

After the wedding, Margison joined the hundreds of revelers who crammed the inn’s Presidential Lounge to swap stories about the good old days. Ronald and Nancy Reagan spent their wedding night here and Richard and Patricia Nixon were married here, but no one talked about these milestones.

Waiters recalled the night that then-Lt. Gov. Mike Curb came to dinner. He ordered salad with vinegar and oil dressing. There was only French. He ordered a steak, and was told all that was left were prime rib and “old and frozen” swordfish, said 23-year-old bartender, Tom Morrison.

“Then he (Curb) wanted to complain to the manager,” Morrison recalled. “But there was no manager on duty, so he got mad and left.”

No Reason to Gripe

Guests who traveled for a last supper under the colonnades on the Spanish Patio found themselves in similar straits. The kitchen was out of New York pepper steak, halibut and potatoes. The stock of wines had dwindled to just a few bargain brands. But there was little point in complaining.

Ramon Pierson, a diminutive ex-tenant almost as legendary as the hotel itself, eagerly retold his own adventures as he held court in the lounge.

Grinning at the memory over a beer mug of Scotch and soda, the man with a head full of blond curls and a Capt. Kangaroo mustache recalled “crashing all the wedding parties” and organizing a skinny- dip party when the Shirelles singing group appeared several years ago.

Hotel security guards “marched us back on the sidewalk with no clothes on,” Pierson said, exploding into laughter. “We just had towels dangling behind us.”

Stories of the Unseen

In any conversation with hotel staff, the topic inevitably turned to ghosts, specifically the spirit of Frank Miller, who built the Hispanic Revival-style building in stages between 1902 and 1932. He is said to pace in room 413, where he died in 1935.

“I could swear I saw a face staring out of 413,” said electrician Lori Larsen, adding that “weird things have been happening since they said they were going to close the place.”

Odd things, she said, like cabinet doors found open in locked rooms and light bulbs missing from sockets hard to reach without a ladder. One woman security guard is said to have quit last week after hearing footsteps echo eerily behind her in a tiled corridor around the corner from suite 413.

“I won’t go in there alone,” Larsen said, gazing warily up at the corner suite.

As the kitchen shut down and the evening drew to a close, guests and staff members flocked around Sharon Belko, the hotel’s piano player of nine years.

Play It One More Time

“I feel as though I’m playing on the Titanic,” said Belko, as hundreds of well-wishers begged her to bang out Auld Lang Syne one last time on the old grand piano in the Presidential Lounge. “It’s been a sinking proposition.”

The development group planning to buy the inn from its current owner, the Riverside Redevelopment Agency, which bought it in 1976 for $3 million, hopes to change all that.

By January, the Carley Capital Group of Madison, Wis., expects to begin the first stages of a vast $28-million rehabilitation project to restore the masonry building.

The plan, however, may be threatened by President Reagan’s tax reform proposal, which would eliminate a 25% federal tax credit for investors in historical rehabilitation projects.

“We are watching that tax legislation very closely,” said Allen Toma, a spokesman for the group, which is reluctant to try to line up investors while the tax package is being considered. But even if the tax credit is eliminated, Toma said, “It wouldn’t stop the Mission Inn project--but it would change what we could afford to do.”

Some May Return

At 4 p.m. Sunday, the Mission Inn--with its stained and termite-ridden walls, rusted balustrades, chipped tiles, broken windows and rickety stairways--bid farewell to its last customers.

When, and if, the historic hotel reopens, many guests said they would gladly return for a look at the grand old lady. But for employees, it was the end of an era.

Said Belko, “It’s like a death in the family.”