Only in La Jolla: Car-Wash Crew in Black Tie for Sake of Retarded

LA JOLLA —  The thoroughly genteel, correct, proper, well-bred and Emily Post-like response to the opportunities presented by the second annual Black Tie Car Wash & Cafe, to be given June 17 as a benefit for the San Diego County Mental Health Hospital, would be to drive one’s vehicle through a commercial car wash before taking it to La Jolla to be scrubbed by a band of formally dressed civic leaders.

It would be vastly more polite, without question, to present an immaculate auto to the sponges wielded by such volunteers as former Police Chief Bill Kolender and UC San Diego Chancellor Dick Atkinson than to bring in a vehicle covered with the baked-on grime of a monthlong journey through Baja California. Sponsors of the event remain confident that individuals who once received parking tickets or were placed on academic probation will not take advantage of the situation by driving up in automobiles that most recently were taken off-roading through mud bogs and cow pastures.

Kolender shares chairmanship duties with Nancy Hester, who founded the event last year and also is known as the founder of La Jolla’s annual Off-the-Wall Street Dance, the enduring summer frolic always given on the last Sunday of August as a benefit for the UCSD School of Medicine. Campy, tongue-in-cheek touches are the norm at both events, and, at the Black Tie Car Wash, they will include entertainment by one-man-band Ira Cobb; brunch and lunch prepared under the supervision of food mavens George Munger and John Baylin, and a bar (non-alcoholic beverages only; the group discourages drinking and driving) presided over by society bartender Ed Washington.

A large group of notables has signed on to wash cars in the parking lot behind the San Diego Trust & Savings Bank office on Girard Avenue, including sports broadcaster Charlie Jones, retired Marine Corps Gen. Louis Metzger, banker Bob Adelizzi, John Murphy, Kate Adams and Janet Gallison. The car wash and cafe will be held between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., and tickets are priced at $15. For further information, contact Nancy Hester.

SAN DIEGO--Sponsors of Saturday’s “Come Sail With Us” benefit for the Assn. for Retarded Citizens-San Diego expected sweet results from the gala dinner and auction, given in the Marina Ballroom at the San Diego Marriott for 275 guests.

The net proceeds will be divided among the eight countywide ARC programs. One that will share in the bounty is Archer’s Confectionary, a Carlsbad candy kitchen that employs the mentally retarded and hopes to acquire two new candy machines that will allow it to significantly expand its operations and payroll.

“I’ll be able to increase employment at Archer’s when we get these machines,” said Richard Farmer, executive director of ARC-SD. “ ‘Come Sail With Us’ will help us to put more of the mentally retarded and developmentally disabled to work. The more employment we are able to offer the handicapped, the less of a burden they are on society.”

The event took its theme from one of its main live auction offerings, a 17-foot power runabout; in a cheerful echo of this major item, the silent auction included an inflatable dinghy for those bidders who feel most comfortable when they are nearest the shore. Among other items up for bid were a kind of reverse ploy on Arizonans entitled “Zonies Beware,” in which a pair of San Diego tourists will be shipped off to Phoenix for the weekend, and a luncheon aboard the historic Cyrus K. Holliday private railroad car.

Chairwoman Char Nordell emphasized that funds raised by ticket sales and the auctions will go directly to benefit ARC clients.

“The proceeds will be used for capital equipment that will benefit client development, and not for any other purposes,” she said.

Honorary chairmen Jaci and John Einhorn led a guest list that included Carol and Jim Davis, state Sen. Wadie Deddeh (D-Chula Vista), Nancy Garland, Jane and Willis Fletcher, Susan and Ed Fuller, Dean Nordell, Ann and Steve Hall, Leslie Autry, Judy Fivecoat, Richard Shea and Bonnie Mackey.

A “Frisbee dance,” even when performed by free-style Frisbee champions Stacy Anderson and Rick Castiglia, might not set quite the desired tone at the run-of-the-mill fashion luncheon, but it was a natural for “Sports Stars in Style,” given May 1 by the Hall of Champions Auxiliary in the Mission Ballroom at the Town & Country Hotel for more than 525 guests.

Anderson and Castiglia set the tone for the dozens of participating athletes (the roster included six members of the San Diego Sockers and Chargers quarterback Mark Vlasic), who often can be reticent in public, but decided to camp things up a bit as they swept down the runway in fashions from The Highlander and Lillie Rubin.

Chairman Virginia Monday organized the fund-raiser for the Balboa Park sports museum’s summer youth program.

“The children are going to be so happy because of what this show will make possible for them,” she said. The event netted $30,000, and museum President Ron Fowler said 5,000 youngsters are expected to participate in the summer program of entertainment and water and sports safety film presentations.

Besides the on-stage cavortings of Stars & Stripes navigator Peter Isler, football Hall of Fame honoree Ron Mix and champion surfer Jim (Mouse) Robb, the day offered silent and live auctions that included a goodly number of sports-related offerings. The most hotly contested item--travel arrangements and a pair of tickets to the September semifinals of the U.S. Tennis Open in New York--sold for $2,700.

Harriett Fowler co-chaired a committee that included Kay Rippee, Lynn Silva, Linda Saxon, Diane Pastore, Linda Horrell, Barbara Rieger, Sara Jackson, Jennifer Heft, Barbara Franovich, Lynn Luckey-Thompson, Barbara Malone, Fran Golden, Rosemary Logan, Pat Lijewski and Betty Hubbard.