Dancing Shoes OK in This Gym

Bonnie Dankberg leaned against a railing in the Bren Events Center, looking down at the sea of empty aquamarine seats. One story below, surrounded and nearly overwhelmed by the vastness and blunt blueness of the place, were pink-clothed auction tables, daintily appointed and stacked with gifts.

“I know, I know,” said Dankberg, rolling her big brown eyes. “Kind of a strange place to throw a party, isn’t it?”

Hey, on a social circuit stocked with parties-in-the-mall, a formal-in-the-gym didn’t seem all that strange.

Saturday’s fund-raiser for the Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation drew 330 party-goers to the UC Irvine campus center and raised an estimated $70,000, according to Dankberg, who chaired the event.

Her explanation for the unusual setting was simple: “By the time we started planning, we couldn’t get a weekend night at any of the local hotels.”

Never mind. There was something wonderfully metaphoric about benefit guests dining beneath a giant scoreboard. A scoreboard emblazoned with a bank logo, no less.

Before dinner, guests enjoyed cocktails and appetizers while making silent auction bids (or watching bidders from one of the many front-row seats).

Among early arrivals was Sheryl Roman, dressed in red silk and a fox fur--a dramatic departure from the black-and-white attire suggested on the invitations.

“Did (the invitations) say that?” asked Roman, giggling. “Oops!”

Roman, who said she got her fur at the foundation’s dinner/auction 2 years ago, attended with her husband, Vince, and her mother, Jan Hehr, one of the founding members of the research organization.

The Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation, which funds studies at the research lab at Childrens Hospital of Orange, was established 6 years ago and is directed by Dr. Mitchell Cairo.

Cairo spoke with pride of the hospital’s bone-marrow transplant program, which he said has treated 22 patients since June, 1986.

Foundation President Joseph McNeil sat quietly nearby as Cairo spoke, then added, as an aside: “He’s a franchise maker--Dr. Cairo is the Wilt Chamberlain of this program.”