First 2 Names Posted : California Club Moves to Admit Women Members

The exclusive California Club has posted the names of its first two prospective women members. They are E. Cameron Cooper, a senior vice president of Arco, and Linda Hartwick, a senior associate of the executive search firm of Korn-Ferry International.

The names were sent out with this month’s bills and arrived at the addresses of the downtown club’s 1,275 regular members about the same time as the members received a new letter from a growing group of club dissidents who are determined to keep women out.

Members who spoke with The Times said that in accord with California Club practice, Cooper and Hartwick must appear before the club’s membership committee for its final approval and will then be on a waiting list for several months until vacancies open in the regular membership.

However, they viewed the posting of their names as a definitive step that virtually assures their eventual membership.

Meanwhile, the dissident group headed by former club President John M. Robinson has sent a new letter to the membership demanding that the club’s board of directors order a new “truly secret” ballot on defying a Los Angeles city ordinance that went into effect last year banning membership discrimination by most of the city’s large private clubs.

Robinson is also head of the California State Club Assn., an umbrella group for private clubs. Last year, in a newsletter he strongly defended what he termed a club’s “right to . . . discriminate” in its membership.

The new letter was signed by 66 California Club members, an increase from the 41 who had signed two previous letters.

The letter said four prominent clubs in San Francisco--the Pacific-Union, the Bohemian, the Family and the Metropolitan--and two clubs in New York--the Union and the Brook--have recently adopted the kind of “house rules” the dissidents are proposing for the California Club.

Those rules declare that the clubs are strictly private, will not be used for business purposes and therefore are not subject to antidiscrimination laws.

The letter also took note of last week’s lawsuit by the Los Angeles city attorney’s office against another big downtown club, the Jonathan, which admitted women to its membership but then denied them the use of one of three club restaurants, the men’s bar and grill.

“The city’s suit clearly proceeds on the assumed premise that use of the facilities of those clubs that are subject to the ordinance will henceforth be governed by rules as decreed or approved in the City Hall, not by the clubs’ own directors and members,” the letter said. “Need we say more on this subject?”

California Club leaders have said they will not back down from plans to integrate the club.

Meanwhile, the deputy city attorney who is handling the city’s enforcement efforts, Pamela A. Albers, said she would prefer to focus her efforts on clubs that have not begun the integration process at all, rather than those that have integrated but are still keeping women out of certain facilities.

But, Albers said, it is much more difficult to prosecute such straight membership cases because someone must complain that they have been kept out, while, with the continued segregation of club restaurants and the like, these are easily established facts and no specific complaint is needed.