Country Club Owner Gets the Red Cross Treatment
At the American Red Cross, spirit is what counts.
So each year, the local chapter of the relief organization presents a Spirit Award to an individual “whose efforts have made a significant contribution to improving the quality of life in Orange County.” Thursday night at the new Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach, the chapter’s third recipient was William D. Ray, owner of the Balboa Bay Club and the Newport Beach Country Club.
The black-tie dinner-dance and tribute were attended by more than 300 of Ray’s friends.
If the party seemed more low key this year--and if the $25,000 raised was down sharply from the $100,000 generated last year--the Red Cross’s new director of financial development, Evan Fruithandler, said there was a reason.
“This year is just friends . . . and not a lot of vendors,” Fruithandler explained.
Bob Fuess, Balboa Bay Club vice president of membership, reflected on the selection of his employer as Spirit Award honoree during the cocktail reception.
Fuess said: “The Spirit Award is always given to somebody who sits off in the back, who’s done a lot but you don’t read about them in the columns every week. Tony Moiso is kind of a quiet guy, and before him Don Karcher--his brother Carl gets all the accolades. . . .” (Moiso, chief executive of Rancho Santa Margarita, and Donald Karcher, president of Carl Karcher Enterprises, were past recipients.)
Asked if the award was actually intended to recognize the strong, silent type, event chairman Joe Perricone said no. “The powerful, silent type,” he corrected.
In honor of Ray, an avid outdoorsman, dinner featured duck on a bed of red cabbage and wild rice. On the dessert plate was a marzipan emblem bearing the Balboa Bay Club logo. The design of the elegant invitations had featured a feathered fishing hook; another hook graced each place setting. “I’m going to collect them all during the dance numbers,” Ray commented.
Joey Bishop, who served as master of ceremonies, met Ray 13 years ago when Bishop was building his home in Newport Beach.
“I came up by boat,” Bishop recalled during the meal. “All I had was a boat and no place to put it. Not only did Bill let me dock at the Bay Club, he gave me a place to stay (at the club) until the building was finished. Later, I did the (Bay Club) employees’ dinners at Christmas with John Wayne. . . . I was presented a lifetime membership.”
Ray is executive producer of Bill Burrud’s new “Adventure World,” which he hopes will soon be seen on network television. Burrud, who attended the dinner, produced a tongue-in-cheek video about Ray’s life.
One scene listened in on Ray as he discussed stocking his new country club’s golf course with marlin and catfish. Another showed Ray in a wet suit and jungle hat, carrying a fishing pole and a rifle, saying to his wife, Beverly, “I’m off to work, honey, be back in a couple of weeks.” A longtime friend reminisced about fishing experiences enjoyed with Ray. “Gosh, we went out in my boat one time,” Donny Ward recalled, “his poles were worth more than my boat.”
Ray is a director with Carroll Shelby and C. V. Wood of the International Chili Society and was the architect of its bylaws. Last year, the society raised more than $8 million for different charities and nonprofit organizations.
Moiso reluctantly relinquished his Spirit nickname-for-a-year. The actual award, newly designed every year by Ron Wood, featured a marlin etched between two thick pieces of glass floating on a burl of Pacific island maple.
Ray said, upon accepting the award: “When I first came to this area, I realized it was an area . . . of generosity that sometimes is conspicuous, but more frequently is not. That’s the spirit of Orange County. If I can be your banner carrier for the next year, I’m honored.”
According to George Chitty, Red Cross chapter executive director, a committee is being formed by Dick Ortwein, president of the Koll Co. in Orange County, to assess the Red Cross in the 1990s. Meanwhile, Fruithandler said the Red Cross has its hands full in 1986.
“We have a new disaster campaign to incorporate,” Fruithandler said. “Over the course of a year, the Red Cross has had to spend about $22 million over and above what it usually spends, on hurricanes, mud slides, the Northern California floods. . . . Our chapter has to raise an additional $260,000. We’re a third of the way there.”
On hand were Tom Deemer and Klaus Tenter, general managers respectively of the Bay Club and Four Seasons, former Los Angeles Sheriff Peter Pitchess and Roger and Sassy Luby, who were still excited over their daughter’s recent graduation from USC: Graduate Christine had arranged for a plane to pass over during the ceremonies pulling a banner that read, “Luby grad loves Luby dad.”