Not a Roast But a Toast for Cleator

SAN DIEGO —  Saturday, a man who once touched the Queen of England touched the hearts of hundreds of his fellow San Diegans.

Former City Councilman Bill Cleator and his wife, Marilyn, occupied the seats of honor at “An Evening with Bill and Marilyn,” the second annual dinner-dance given to benefit the San Diego Hospice. Nearly 500 leaders of the city’s business, political and charitable communities braved a nightmarish parking situation at the San Diego Marriott to attend the testimonial and cheer as the Cleators received the 1988 Humanitarian Award.

Mayor Maureen O’Connor, who bested Bill Cleator in the 1986 mayoral race, presented the award on behalf of 1987 award recipient and evening general chairman Joan Kroc. The friendship between the one-time political opponents is well known and certainly was on display Saturday, when O’Connor showered unrestrained praise upon the honorees.

“Bill is truly a wonderful human being, but with everyone wonderful, there is always someone a little more wonderful behind him, and that’s Marilyn,” said O’Connor. “Marilyn was always there for Bill, and Bill was always there for this community. And it’s true, Bill Cleator is the shadow mayor. He tells everybody what to do, including me.”

O’Connor’s final comment referred to remarks made earlier by dinner co-chair Malin Burnham, who after promising that the evening would not in any way be “a roast or an extravaganza,” but simply an opportunity to toast the Cleators, went on to reveal the way that he and other Point Loma High School class of 1945 graduates felt about classmate Bill Cleator.

“In those days, we all recognized Bill for what he was or was to be,” said Burnham. “He was such an organizer and was so good at telling people what to do that before he left high school he was known as ‘the mayor.’ ”

In his response, Bill Cleator chose to speak primarily about the mission of the hospice. “We’re going to be involved with it forever, and I hope everyone recognizes that the hospice is part of his responsibility,” he said. (With site and funding ready, San Diego Hospice awaits legislative approval for its license before construction of the 24-bed facility on Vauclain Point can begin. Generating support for this legislation was a theme stressed repeatedly through the evening.)

Earlier, Marilyn Cleator laid credit for their shared honor at her husband’s feet. “I imagine Bill is the key figure why we’re being honored tonight, but I’m very happy to be included,” she said. “Bill was instrumental in getting Vauclain Point as the site for the hospice, and he’s also on their foundation board.” Marilyn Cleator does, however, share in her husband’s involvement with this facility that will offer care and special services to the dying and their families, and serves as a member of the Hospice Associates.

An amusing, videotaped tribute followed the dinner of chicken (at a party populated by so many politicians, what else could be served?) and baked Alaska. Just as speakers throughout the evening teased Cleator about the protocol gaffe he made by touching Queen Elizabeth during her royal visit to San Diego in 1983, so the videotape included a sequence, filmed outside the Old Globe Theater, of a man in saddle shoes (Cleator’s trademark) pursuing a fleeing queen in polka dots (a duplicate of the famous dress the British monarch wore here) down a walkway.

Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif) and his wife, Gayle, also appeared on tape. The former mayor, speaking in the most arch of tones, said that he thought Marilyn Cleator “should have received the Humanitarian Award years ago for spending all those years with Bill.”

A more serious moment arrived, however, when Academy Award-winning actress Mercedes McCambridge, who also attended the dinner as a member of the Kroc party, delivered a prerecorded message from the screen.

“Hospice is the missing chapter in the medical text books,” said McCambridge. “It deals with the quality of life and the dignity of death.”

Dinner co-chair Tom Stickel and San Diego Hospice Foundation board chairman Murray Galinson headed a long list of notables that included city Councilmen Ron Roberts and Ed Struiksma; San Diego Unified Port District commissioners Dan Larsen and Don Nay; former Chief of Police Bill Kolender and his wife, Lois; David and Kay Porter; hospice executive director Holly Lorentson; Paul and Marge Palmer; Art and Nancy Johnson; Peter and Kathleen Stark; Michael and Alice Cavanaugh, Robert Cleator Jr., and Roy and Dorothea Cleator.

Pianist Barry Levich played as marvelously as ever at Friday’s “Gourmet Bubble Bash,” but he missed the opportunity of a lifetime when he failed to play “Skip to the Loo, My Darling.”

Levich and the 600 guests who enjoyed his serenades were, after all, in a setting that abounded in plumbing fixtures. The new Standards of Excellence bath and kitchen fixtures showroom on Morena Boulevard proved a most unusual milieu for the “bubble bash,” a one-of-a-kind fund-raiser for the San Diego Service Center for the Blind, organized by Nancy Hester and Cuilly Burdett.

The fund-raiser was given in response to a June burglary at the Service Center for the Blind, in which thieves made away with cash, white canes, low-vision watches and special Braille typewriter equipment and copier paper. The center, which provides services free of charge to some 2,000 clients annually, has not previously been the beneficiary of a gala event.

The center’s director, Warren Simon, stood guard duty near a tub in which a mermaid blew bubbles rather disinterestedly while occasionally rearranging her tail. After teasingly expressing his hope that guests would “enjoy the quality of our bubbles,” he stressed that the party was given for the sole purpose of drawing public attention to the center’s renovation campaign. Some $20,000 was raised by the event, the expenses of which were completely underwritten by Standards of Excellence and North County eye surgeon Dr. William Maloney.

Hester and Burdett organized an event that, while frolicsome and wildly unusual, was in fact a simple case of form following function. Since the showroom features bathrooms and kitchens, the baths were turned into fantasy settings and the kitchens, much more practically, into proving grounds for the talents of seven restaurants and caterers that cooked up an extravagant array of edibles.