A Few Melodies Generate Smiles

The burly former high school football coach strode into the recreation room of a Laguna Hills convalescent hospital, picked up the microphone and faced his audience: nearly two dozen elderly women and a few men seated in wheelchairs.

“Hello,” he said. “My name’s Bob Mahoney. I happen to be your entertainer today.”

“Good!” cried out one of the women in the otherwise-quiet audience, applauding the ruddy-faced, 60-year-old singer dressed in summer white pants, white shoes and an open-neck, checked sport shirt.

Mahoney grinned.

“I’m very happy to be here with you,” he said. “I hope you enjoy some of the things I’m going to do. . . . There was a guy named Al Jolson who did a couple of songs, and I’d like to do one for you.”

Mahoney switched on the tape recorder behind him and, with his knees bobbing slightly to the beat of the music, began singing in a smooth, surprisingly youthful baritone:

Rockabye your baby--with a Dixie mel-o-dy .

As Mahoney is the first to admit, he’s no Vic Damone. Or Al Jolson, for that matter.

“I’m a rank amateur,” he said, standing in the hallway outside the Beverly Manor recreation room before his performance. “If I get a smile on their faces, I think it’s great.”

Over the past 1 1/2 years, the Laguna Niguel resident has made elderly people at a handful of such county hospitals smile. The performances are strictly a volunteer effort for Mahoney, and he’d like to do them more often.

But as the general manager of Atlantic Investments, a development and management company building a five-star hotel in Malibu, it’s not easy squeezing singing engagements into a busy workweek that includes dealing with tenant problems, looking at new properties and meeting with planning commissioners and members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

But for Mahoney, it’s worth the effort to sing to people who can no longer go out to be entertained.

“It helps you kind of get close to what life’s all about: We’re all getting older,” he said.

“I think we’ve all got to share in humanity. I’m kind of philosophical, I guess, but that’s the way I am. I respect older people. I think sometimes we push them aside because they’re not (considered) important anymore. But they’re important to God.”

It was a warm afternoon; Mahoney wiped beads of perspiration off his forehead.

“My mom always told me everybody has talents of different types, and if you like to sing, you should sing,” he said. “I’ve often thought about that and felt this would be something good for me to share some time with people. I like doing it, and hopefully they like it.”

With a hearty laugh, he added: “I’ll tell you one thing, I’ve got a sedentary audience. They can’t get away.”

Mahoney said he has always loved music and singing.

Growing up in Glendale as the son of the high school track and basketball coach, however, “it was considered very unmanly to sing,” he said.

“I just sang with my mother in the kitchen while doing dishes. She would have me sing ‘Danny Boy’ and those songs. My mom was quite Irish.”

While in high school in the middle 1940s, Mahoney played on the football and baseball teams but never considered joining the school choir.

“There were certain guys that played tennis and sang,” he said. “Those guys were sissies. To dance was even (considered) feminine in the mid-’40s.”

But times have changed. Now, he said, “you’ve got the Merlin Olsens of the world selling flowers.”

Mahoney followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming head football and baseball coach at San Marino High School and La Canada High School. His 16-year coaching career ended in 1970 when he went into real estate sales and development.

But over the years he continued to be what he refers to as a “closet singer”--with a few public exceptions. “Oh, I’m famous in some piano bars,” he said with a grin. “I love it. Music makes me feel good.”

Mahoney’s repertoire consists of about 100 songs, but he sticks to mostly upbeat tunes when he performs at hospitals. He said he leaves out “The Way We Were,” his favorite, because “people cry too much. I like love songs, but I don’t want to sing sad songs to the people, and most love songs have a little bit of sadness. In in a bar they’re fine.”

So far, Mahoney has performed about half a dozen times for older audiences at Leisure World, Mission Viejo Hospital, Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach and Beverly Manor in both Laguna Hills and San Juan Capistrano. He said he plans to increase his performing schedule during the Christmas season.

Shari Ryan, activities director at Beverly Manor in Laguna Hills, said volunteer performers such as Mahoney are appreciated: “We try to provide the best possible quality of life (for the patients), and having entertainment helps bring back some of the normalcy, or special things they would have done on their own.”

She said the hospital tries to schedule one or two performers a month.

“Being able to enjoy different kinds of entertainment that isn’t at their (patients’) disposal anymore is really a nice emotional outlet,” she said. “It’s something they look forward to.”

Mahoney looks forward to it too, although he admits that the elderly patients aren’t the best audiences: “They don’t clap and stomp their feet. Some can’t even clap. You don’t go there to get a rip-roaring audience. It’s very dull for the guy doing it. It’s just something the good Lord above would want people to do, so I do it.”

Mahoney said he limits his performances to about half an hour, enough time to sing about a dozen songs.

“I don’t go on too long,” he said, as another wheelchair went by. “You know what it is? It’s a break in their day. Nobody knows my name. I just entertain and leave. I’m proud I get a chance to do this. My heart goes out to them.”

Mahoney glanced into the recreation room.

“Well, it’s 1:30,” he said. “I’m going to go in.”

Mahoney had sung “You’re the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me,” made famous by Gladys Knight; “Margaritaville” (Jimmy Buffett); “Always on My Mind” (Willie Nelson), and “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” (Tony Bennett).

“This song is one Frank Sinatra did,” Mahoney said, punching a button to start another taped instrumental.

Several patients kept time to the beat with their feet as Mahoney sang, “You make me feel so young. “

As Mahoney was packing up to leave, most of the patients sat quietly in their wheelchairs. But one woman wheeled up to him and smiled.

“Thanks a lot, young man,” she said.

“You sure have a cute smile,” Mahoney said.

“You put it there. . . . Thanks so much for coming.”