Youthful La Jolla Event Still Going Strong at Age 30

Tradition doesn’t mean a great deal when you’re only 17.

But, wittingly or otherwise, 36 young women helped Saturday to perpetuate the tradition begun 30 years ago by the La Jolla Debutante Ball Committee, which founded the annual La Jolla Debutante Ball as a means of introducing well-connected youths to the community responsibilities that some will be expected to shoulder as adults.

As always, the theme, which officially is “children helping children” (ball proceeds flow exclusively to charities for children in San Diego County), tended to get buried beneath the froth of formality and fun. Nonetheless, ball committee members said that about $100,000 in proceeds were generated for Children’s Hospital and other programs for ill and needy children.

It would seem that an event called the La Jolla Debutante Ball should be staged in La Jolla, and once upon a time it was, at La Jolla Country Club. But for years the venue has been the Grand Ballroom at Hotel del Coronado, the spot in which a record crowd of 580 family members and pals gathered to watch the debs take their bows. Nor were the participants by any means exclusively from La Jolla; these days, young women from around the county are chosen, not only because of their family connections, but on the basis of scholastic merit and community involvement.

Some of the ball’s most refreshing scenes are those that take place outside the general view, such as the last-minute rehearsal in which debs, dads and escorts have a final opportunity to practice their respective roles. Saturday, the experienced sneaked into the ballroom to watch as the girls confidently led the menfolk through their paces, exactly as orchestrated by presentation director Peter Gregg Benjamin, himself the heritor of a family tradition as old as the ball itself.

While family members huddled under gray skies in the hotel’s garden court, the stars of the show re-rehearsed the proper ways to bow and promenade. Peter Benjamin, in his third year in the role that his father, Donald Benjamin, played at the first 24 balls, called out directions in an encouraging tone, and everyone managed quite nicely to walk in the same direction at the same time. It isn’t at all easy when 108 pairs of feet are involved.

Donald Benjamin was present to cheer on his son and watch the girls reprise roles that, in some cases, he saw their mothers enact. He acknowledged feeling a touch of nostalgia.

“It’s kind of a sentimental time, and I miss the job a little, but time goes by,” Benjamin said.

Peter Benjamin, a Point Loma surfboard manufacturer, said he was glad to take up the baton passed him by his father. “My father was the ball’s Mr. Benjamin, and now I am Mr. Benjamin,” he said. “There is a real tradition in this.”

But it was the girls--Patricia Yelenosky, Kara Goodwin, Natalie Berry, Dorothy Turner, Camille Tan and Jennifer Brown, to name several--who were the most visible keepers of the flame. Uniformly dressed in floor-length white gowns, each demonstrated a certain poise acquired at least partly through months of participation in deb gatherings and parties.

Anne Rifat, debutante chairman, said the series of parties that preceded the ball was specifically designed to be “a learning process that makes the debs comfortable in all sorts of social situations.” This comfort with situations in turn, said Rifat, was intended for a more important purpose. “Being a deb gives the girls extra opportunities to become involved with charities. That really is our main goal.”

Asked what they thought about the process, a couple of the debs concurred in Rifat’s description. Lisa Waitley said, “Being a deb has given me the opportunity to be with friends and family in an environment that I’ll have to be in when I’m older, so I guess I’ve learned a lot. I know I’d do it again.”

Roslyn Cole said that being a debutante had “given her good standing in society,” and had taught her, as well. “I’ve learned manners--a lot! I’ve learned how to be graceful and ladylike.”

When the formal presentation, made by San Diego Union columnist Burl Stiff, began, the girls gave every appearance of having known how to be ladylike for some time. The Joe Moshay Orchestra played a special tune as each stepped down from the stage, rose nosegay in hand, to take the arm of her father for a grand tour around the perimeter of the dance floor. There had been some amused speculation that “Stars and Stripes Forever” would be played when Julie Conner joined her father, sailor Dennis Conner, but the orchestra instead obliged with “I Hear Music when I Look at You.” Among those following Conner were Sarah Coutts, Deirdre Farr, Jill Golden, Elizabeth Teel, Amanda Hench, Catherine O’Dorisio, Stephanie Moffat, Tracy Taddey and Lauren Weiss.

The presentation complete, the girls and dads regrouped for a final fling, a march under the crossed swords of local university Naval ROTC midshipmen, and then the traditional father-daughter waltz to the opening strains of “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.” The debs were only briefly daddy’s girls, though, because the escorts quickly cut in--and then, youth being what it is, the evening relaxed into hours of dancing interrupted briefly by an interesting chicken dinner. Among those frequently seen on the floor were Helen Otterson, Kelli Fletcher, Barbara Strauss, Theresa Sanchez, Paige Patridge, Stacey Shenas, Evie Straumfjord, Susan Smith and Vida Reiss.

If the girls’ mothers seemed to be rather on the sidelines, it is because, after months as chaperones and party givers (and a few last hours spent adjusting their daughters’ gowns and cajoling husbands to put on the white gloves required by their white tie-and-tails uniforms), they were, in fact, relegated to the roles of spectators. All watched with motherly pride, of course, applauded at the right moments, and, at times, discreetly sniffled into lace handkerchiefs.

Ball founder Brownie Kniff was on hand to watch as Leslie Jacoway, Donna Gardner, Victoria Fletcher, Janine Dolgas, Anna Denton, Jennifer Eales, Jill Finney, Elisabeth Jones and Sarah Fraser took their bows. She has attended all but one of the 27 balls, and said, “It’s a nice feeling that it’s been a success from the first. A lot of women who were presented long ago are tonight presenting their own daughters.”

Debutante Ball President Adrienne Boroff was part of a committee that included Maxine Bloor, Mary Wayne, Tracey Barrett, Frances Ramage, Barbara Hancock, Lisa Fegarsky, Anne Lloyd and Elizabeth Cote.

SAN DIEGO--The joke going around the San Diego Zoo’s new Tiger River exhibit was that the general and collective committee for the June 18 RITZ (“Rendezvous in the Zoo”) gala is going ape over the party. The event actually will benefit the proposed new home for the zoo’s lowland gorillas, but then, gorillas lend themselves less well to puns.

Much of the committee gathered last Thursday to tour Tiger River, enjoy a cocktail buffet and generally anticipate RITZ, a relatively new but highly respected fixture on the summer calender; the gala, expected to attract a capacity crowd of 820, very much sets the tone for the rest of the season.

The boa constrictor, mouse deer and Sumatran tigers that inhabit the exhibit seemed basically uninterested in the proceedings, although the tigers might have been livelier had they found a way around the glass wall that separated them from their viewers. The guests in turn appreciated the glass. “It’s like looking at a great painting, you keep your distance,” said Rita Neeper as she returned the tigers’ tigerish gaze.

Committee chairman Jan Madigan said that, although she doesn’t exactly feel chummy with the gorillas she hopes to benefit, she does want to see them in better quarters. “I think everybody loves gorillas, I know I do,” she said. “They look so big and aggressive, when they’re really gentle. I like the idea of building a naturalized enclosure for them so that they’ll feel like they’re out in the wild.”

Plans for the gala are being kept more or less under wraps, but expect the gorilla theme to be as complete as if King Kong had sent in a reservation for a table of 10. The menu sounds amusing; it will end with what was described as a cake carved into a landscape, which menu co-chair Audrey Geisel gamely declared will be “slightly Rousseau-ish.”

Among those viewing tigers and nibbling cheese were Mike Madigan; Ingrid Hibben; zoo director Doug Myers and his wife, Barbara; Karen Speidel with her son, Hans; Vicky and Keith Adams; Jean and Al Anderson; Sharon and Lee Grissom; Chuck Bieler; Judy Cornelius, and Lollie and Bill Nelson.