United Way Celebrates Its Achievement

The United Way expected to meet its $89-million goal this year, and a talented cast of 1,000 volunteers turned out for the campaign victory celebration, “You Are the Stars,” at the Sheraton Universal. Great expectations create great goals. No matter that the campaign hit only $88,322,317 (more still dribbles in) because that’s an all-time total.

General campaign chairman George F. Moody, board chairman Irwin S. Field and president Leo P. Cornelius brought the hard-working Campaign Cabinet upstage, mixed the night with a good deal of Charlie Chaplin-like teasing and Hollywood silliness, and lauded such Los Angeles star performers as associate chair Timm F. Crull, Peter W. Mullin, Robert Wycoff, Richard S. Kline, Richard M. Ferry, Louis W. Foster, Keith Renken (who chaired the metropolitan region), Charlie Parker, James H. Gray, Fred Bowen, Jack Murphy (he heads the newest region, Antelope Valley) and more.

Campaigning for the next big one already is under way. James P. Miscoll, executive vice president, Bank of America, will be campaign chairman. He and Cornelius are out to raise the goal and broaden the base of givers. Cornelius wants Angelenos to give more. “Los Angeles’ per capita is $9,” he said. The highest in the United States is Cleveland, he said, with $20.

Said Miscoll, just back from United Way of America headquarters in Arlington, Va.: “I issued a challenge to Chicago, which raises just a little more than we. We are going to beat them next year, and that will be a lot of fun for Chicago and fun for Los Angeles--the Big Orange is going to eat the Big Stockyard.”

EARFULLY YOURS: For heightening public awareness about hearing aids, former President Ronald Reagan will be honored by the Associates of the House Ear Institute as the recipient of the Humanitarian of the Year Award at Saturday’s gala in the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton. Reagan suffered a hearing loss in an accident when he was an actor. He’s been a patient of Dr. Howard House, founder of the institute, and Dr. John House, institute president, since 1979.

About 1,000 supporters will join the Reagans for the affair. Bob Hope will emcee; entertainers will be Patti Austin, Nanette Fabray, Florence Henderson, John Raitt, Michael Rupert, David Ogden Stiers and the Smith Twins.

Janet Brockway chairs the salute with lots of support from Jane Ward, honorary chairman, and Frances Hilton, president of the Institute Associates. Dinner sponsors include Rowena Burgman, Lynn and Clement Hirsch, Verle and Anselmo Pozzo and Robert Williams.

ICE AGE HOT: Ed and Nadine Carson and John and Joan Hotchkis kibitzed by the Imperial Mammoth, the largest of the elephants that lived in North America in the Ice Age. Betty Harrison and Susan Tuttle, Ann and Jim Agnew, Stuart and Carrie Ketchum, Jim and Sylviane Walker and Bruce and Marty Coffey stood by the saber-toothed tiger family, an exhibit that had been co-sponsored by Betty and Ed Harrison.

A crowd was enticed by the Paleontology Laboratory where technicians were working on a mammoth-tooth replacement. In this group: Stephen and Kay Onderdonk, Betty and former Ambassador to the Vatican William Wilson, Ruth and Tom Jones, Jim Wharton, Shelton Ellis and Marianne Winslow, Penny and Julian von Kalinowski.

It was the big crowd--800--for the Dinosaur Ball, held always at the Natural History Museum, but this year at the museum’s satellite George C. Page Museum (named for Page who attended with Merle Kingsley) on Wilshire. The gala fell under the tutelage of Elaine Leventhal and a ball committee opting for innovation. On the committee were Kay Dale, Sunny Feinerman, Pat Herbert, Yone Kawahara, Ruth Nutt, Mary Ann Pocapalia, Betty Reddin, Harry Tytle and a lot more.

For innovation, the committee erected a huge white tent, propped in four corners by palm trees. White Ice Age mammals were centerpieces.

From cocktails in the museum’s lush atrium among the spectacular skeletons of mammals and birds from the La Brea Tar Pits, and after jiggers of vodka, the crowded sashayed onto the dance floor to Ron Rubin’s orchestra. Bob and Betty Irvin never sat down, it seemed, nor Richard and Nancy Call, Charles and Betty Redmond, Philip and Mary Hawley, Maggie and George Jagels, Joe and Kate Regan and Mary Catherine Harold McBride and Kevin McBride, who can kiss and dance at the same time.

Museum director Craig Black and his wife, Liz, sat next to Diane and Don Becket, discussing the Blacks’ departure the next day for Beijing. (Don has made 37 trips to China.) Also at that table were Russell and Jeanne Smith and Alison and Joe Winter. Michael and Lori Milken were listed as guests, but didn’t appear at Table 74.

Al and Katie Osterloh did yeoman’s duty for the gala. Al brought his parrots--Jonathan Winters, Quits and Kahli--from his office. Katie won’t let them in the house, but for a photo she agreed to appear with Quits, and thus endured his pecking at her flowing hair, but only for a second.

SISTERLY LOVE: Edward Doheny would have loved the crowd snooping around Doheny Mansion at 10 Chester Place the other evening at the celebration for Sister Magdalen Coughlin, retiring president of Mount St. Mary’s.

Nearly 500 appeared black-tied to mingle with clergy headed by Archbishop Roger Mahony and Sister Cecilia Louise Moore, Mount St. Mary’s chairman of the board and the Secretariat of the Los Angeles Archdiocese. Of Sister Magdalen, “She’s an amazing lady,” said artist Marina Day, wife of Robert Day, chairman of the board of Trust Co. of the West. She put her artistic touch on the evening, adapting the feeling of the mansion into a tent, starlit with lavender light and palms and filled with tables clothed in lace and topped with lilacs and tulips. Pretty is an understatement.

Earlier, during cocktails, Michael and Suzy Niven explored every cranny of the mansion; it was his first time there, and he’s the great-grandson of Edward Doheny, who built the mansion, and also the grandson of Lucy Battson, who built Greystone in Beverly Hills.

Co-chairmen of the celebration Caroline W. Nahas, Korn/Ferry executive, and David L. McIntyre, Fremont Insurance Group president and CEO and a Mount trustee, worked with Barbara S. Casey, William H. Elliott, Frank X. McNamara (former president of the United Way and a consultant to the Mount) and Maryanne Weiss to orchestrate the evening, intended to advance the school’s presence in the community and its fund raising for the school Sister Magdalen loves.

Kudos came from the audience chatting at tables as well as from the podium. Said Fiorenza Courtright: “We’re always thrown off by those habits,” she said. “We forget how brilliant these nuns are.” From the stage Sister Cecilia Louise noted, “Sister is a person who genuinely loves life, and she likes a good party. . . . God always seems to be on her side, and that is name dropping at the highest level.”

Mayor Tom Bradley and others praised her for her sweet and gentle and loving way, and particularly for opening educational opportunities for minority first-generation college students.

In her acceptance, Sister Magdalen reduced the fanfare, saying: “Each of us can do more than we think we can do.” In her honor, McIntyre revealed that trustees would initiate a campaign to double the Mount’s endowment--raising it to $12 million in one year. To a surprised Sister Magdalen, who will continue as a fund-raiser for the college, he announced, “The Conrad Hilton Foundation is spearheading this goal with $500,000, and we have three gifts this week that equal that.”