$99,000 Faux Pas Reveals Funding Gap

It was a moment worth savoring, just a little slip of the tongue. But it wasn’t just any slip. It was developer Henry T. Segerstrom’s. And when Segerstrom slips, people listen.

Indeed, they also believe. So much so that when he announced a $100,000 award for the Stop-Gap drama therapy troupe at a lavish cocktail party thrown Sunday by the Orange County Business Committee for the Arts, of which he is chairman, some of the 300 guests got the idea he was correcting a misprint in the program for the committee’s annual arts awards.

The program indicated that Stop-Gap would be getting $1,000.

Given the opulence of the surroundings at the Newport Harbor Art Museum, where champagne was being served, not to mention the dinner afterward at the Ritz in Newport Beach and the economic clout of the assembled guests, a six-figure cash prize might have seemed in order.

The expenses for the elegant bash and awards ceremony, underwritten by 16 businesses, will total at least five figures, BCA executive director Betty R. Moss said last week.

“I haven’t added them up yet,” she said. “But you can say they will be $15,000 at a minimum and may cost well over that.”

It was the fifth annual Business in the Arts awards and dinner, and the committee’s most successful to date, Moss said, adding that it was “the first time we’ve had a full house.”

Segerstrom’s innocent gaffe thus became the subject of ironic humor in both the arts and business communities last week. Segerstrom could not be reached for comment.

According to Don Laffoon, Stop-Gap’s director, one joke making the rounds described his troupe as leaving the party owing $99,000.

“Fortunately, I didn’t have cardiac arrest when I heard the announcement,” Laffoon quipped, “because I already had the check from Marsh & McLennan, the company that made the donation. So I knew the amount we were getting.

“But,” Laffoon added, “I’ll never let Henry Segerstrom forget there should have been more zeros.”

Businessman Thomas T. Hammond, who was also at the party, tried to put the misplaced decimal in the best perspective. “The amount of money that went with the Arts Award was intended as a gesture,” said the Newport Beach mortgage banker, whose firm was cited along with 11 others for their business contributions to the arts.

“It’s like when ABC gives a $1,000 scholarship at the end of a (college) football game,” he said. “You could say that’s ridiculously small from such a large corporation. But it’s no indication of what they think of football.”