Mini-Roast Benefits Y in Short Order

A mini- roast? As in small potatoes?

Hardly.

That the black-tie dinner honoring Coalson C. Morris on Saturday night was a mini-roast was in keeping with Morris’ reputation as a stickler for brief, concise meetings and reports. It wasn’t a mini-event: More than 400 guests at the Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach helped net the YMCA Foundation of Orange County $45,000.

Emcee was Morris’ son Jeffery. Roasters included county Supervisor Thomas F. Riley and Morris’ business partner Jack Perry; scheduled roaster state Sen. John Seymour was unable to attend but sent a telegram expressing his regrets. Joked the honoree during his 2 1/2-minute mini-rebuttal, “He won’t be elected again.”

Using his own 3 1/2 roasting minutes plus those of Seymour, Perry noted that Morris “was stuck on only one job, that of chairman of the board--chairman of the board of Westport Savings, chairman of the board of Corporate National Bank and chairman of the board of the Perry Morris Corp.” Perry quipped that “Coalson is so tight-fisted that he still carries IOUs from the tooth fairy.”

The Anaheim-born, raised and educated Morris is also president of the local chapter of the Republican Party’s Lincoln Club. Letters of congratulations from Ronald Reagan, Richard M. Nixon, George Deukmejian, Illinois Gov. James Thompson, Pete Wilson and the state Legislature were displayed at the affair.

Dinner chairman was foundation secretary Russ Leatherby; foundation chairman is Richard Stenton.

Start spreading the news: There is a largely untapped, potentially efficient and loyal work force to be found among clients at the Rehabilitation Center for Brain Dysfunction, which counts among its supporters Frank Sinatra.

Ol’ Blue Eyes appeared Sunday night at the Pacific Amphitheatre. And 150 other center supporters enjoyed dinner at Alfredo’s in Costa Mesa, then boarded buses for the amphitheater, where they occupied some of the choicest seats in the house from Sinatra’s personal allotment.

Marnie Fluor Reed, co-chairman of the pre- and post-concert parties, recalled that four years ago Sinatra staged a benefit concert at Irvine Meadows that raised $300,000 for the fledgling center. “He gave us everything,” Reed said during dinner. “Of course, he can’t do that all the time.” This year, $10,000 was earned from the concert and buffet.

Not untypical of those attending, Reed said that “somebody very close, very personal” suffers from brain dysfunction. “But nobody would know it,” she said. “These people have just done wonders.”

Center founder president Frank Crinella reported two substantial grants this year, one in the amount of $57,000 from the state Department of Rehabilitation and another from oilman-financier Marvin Davis of Denver.

“Through Milton Rudin (a center director, Rudin is also Sinatra’s attorney and arranged for the 1982 benefit) Davis learned of us and sent a nice check for $50,000,” Crinella said. “(With it) we got a vocational training program under way. We’ve placed 26 previously unplaceable people in competitive employment.”

The center deals with young adults whose brain dysfunction cannot be traced to specific, well-defined problems such as mental retardation or physical trauma. Nevertheless, Crinella said that correct diagnosis of disorders is the key to effective vocational training; to that end, he said, the center works with several neuroscientists.

“First we try to understand why these people have not been able to learn well in school or keep their jobs,” Crinella said. “Then we tailor a training experience for them, and finally, we try to find a competitive job where their handicaps won’t knock them out of the saddle.

“One of our clients is now general manager of a company. He can’t read or write, but we taught him how to compensate for his particular learning disability. These people can be extremely productive. And extremely loyal.”

Center director H.C. (Chip) Clitheroe talked about the training experiences clients undergo.

“Mainly what we work on is social skill behavior,” Clitheroe said. “Our people can physically do the work, but they don’t realize when the supervisor is either kidding or really mad. So they lose the job. Others don’t perform well on interviews. They freeze up. So we do a lot of interview practice.”

How do you teach a person to know when someone is kidding?

“Practice. Repetition. Videotapes,” Clitheroe said.

“I’m in the South Coast Metro Rotary Club, and some of the guys come over periodically to interview the clients as if it’s a real world interview. Once in a while, sure, one of the guys will say something funny. The client will deadpan. He won’t realize it was a joke. The guy will explain it to him.

“The training doesn’t always work, but we follow up. If there’s a problem after a client’s hired, the supervisors call us. We can usually mediate successfully. If (the client) stays three or four months, the firm ends up with a completely functional employee.”

For example, Clitheroe continued, at a manufacturing company in Irvine, one client “started and had some rough spots. Now he’s outperforming all of the other ‘normal’ workers on the same job.

“He produces more because he doesn’t get bored. It’s small hand assembly work that would drive you or me nuts in about 10 minutes. But he’s motivated to do a little more than he did the day before. He’s excited just to have a job.”

Event co-chairman with Reed was Taco Bell CEO John Martin, who said he sees that his company could provide “tremendous opportunities” for center clients. “We’ve got 40,000 employees, from entry level to managerial,” Martin said. “That’s something Frank (Crinella) and I are talking about.”

Crinella announced Eugene Ronald as recipient of the Milton A. Rudin Award for his leadership in developing the center’s annual “No-Celebrity Skins Golf Tournament.” Both Rudin and Ronald were golfing in another tournament Sunday, however--”apparently they’re winning, they’re late,” Crinella said--so the presentation was made in absentia.