Giving Viking Lore a Generous Twist

On most days, the Ritz in Newport Beach is a fine-dining establishment adorned with mahogany booths, antlered chandeliers, oak wainscoting and dinner-jacketed gentlemen.

For one Sunday in December, the restaurant becomes an impromptu packinghouse where about 60 volunteers with the Noble Vikings of Orange County prepare more than 8,000 meals.

During several frenzied hours, the meals are assembled into dinners for six, boxed and distributed to 15 charities and organizations -- from the Santa Ana Police Department to the Boys & Girls Club of San Juan Capistrano -- for consumption Christmas Day.

This year’s meals feature a Danish ham, a five-pound bag of russet potatoes, sweet potatoes, instant potato flakes, canned and fresh fruits and vegetables, 20 corn tortillas, assorted cakes and pies, holiday-themed plastic place settings and bags of candy.

The cost of the meals, about $40,000, is defrayed by donations from Sysco Corp.

The dinners have come in handy for the Boys & Girls Club of Santa Ana, which signed up for 35 boxes five years ago. This year, the club took 150 dinner boxes and handed them out to needy families in central Santa Ana.

“Folks are very appreciative,” said John Brewster, the club’s president and chief executive. “It gives them a holiday meal they wouldn’t otherwise have.”

For the Vikings, the Sunday meal-packing party is the highlight of their year.

Not bad for a group of guys, who aren’t even necessarily Scandinavian and who organized 50 years ago in Los Angeles as an excuse to toss back a few glasses of aquavit, a Danish liqueur, at lunch.

“I’m one of the few [group leaders] who really is Danish,” said VerLyn “Sonny” Jensen, an Irvine attorney and longtime lobbyist who helped form the Orange County chapter in 1984.

The group’s lore traces back to the late 1950s, when a cadre of Los Angeles’ business and community leaders, including Los Angeles County Sheriff Peter Pitchess, began a tradition of social lunches at Ken Hansen’s Scandia restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. Determined to do more than socialize, the group decided to raise funds for disabled children and others in need.

Members were honored by having their names engraved in glasses that lined the back wall of Scandia’s bar, where the group would gather for meetings on the last Monday of each month.

The glasses caught the eye of actress Elizabeth Taylor, according to the group’s official history. While dining one afternoon at Scandia, she asked Hansen about the group having so much fun in the back. The story goes that he made her an honorary member on the spot and placed a glass, etched with her name in violet to match her eyes, with the rest of the group’s.

Other famous members included Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, comedian Nipsy Russell, actor Broderick Crawford and then-Sen. Barry Goldwater.

The Orange County group formed after enough members retired in Orange County, many in Newport Beach, who didn’t want to face the drive north.

Famed chef Hans Prager had apprenticed at Scandia and offered the Ritz, his restaurant in Fashion Island that opened in 1977, as a home base.

The local group has grown to 120 members and, like its Los Angeles counterpart, includes businessmen and local leaders, including Orange County’s previous and current sheriffs, Brad Gates and Michael S. Carona. Former Gov. George Deukmejian is scheduled to be January’s guest speaker.

Several years ago, the Orange County group made Orange County Treasurer-Tax Collector John M.W. Moorlach, who is of Dutch descent, an honorary member. Like other Viking newbies, he drank aquavit from a horn and engaged in “all sorts of cornball stuff,” he recalled.

“They’re a great group of friends who are very charitably inclined,” Moorlach said. “It’s the way it ought to be: A bunch of friends come together and then do things for the community.”

In 1995 the members began assembling a few hundred holiday gift baskets featuring frozen turkeys. But not only did the meat require refrigeration, it was difficult for motel-bound families to prepare.

“We decided the [pre-cooked] hams were the way to go, but they cost us $9 a pop,” Jensen said. “I could have gotten turkeys for half that.”

There are now three branches of the organization, with the third in Solvang. Other annual activities include a fishing trip for disabled children and a “day at the races” at Del Mar, when the eighth race is named for the group.

“It’s a nice service they provide,” Brewster said. “They’re colorful guys.”