Meals-On-Wheels on a Roll; Overflow Crowd Jams Gala

The Meals-On-Wheels program sponsored by Senior Adult Services sticks by its motto that “None are ever turned away just because they cannot pay.” But it did turn away a number of would-be paying guests at its 12th annual “Tribute to the Golden Years” benefit, given Nov. 12 at the San Diego Hilton.

An overflow crowd of 720 jammed the International Ballroom to honor builder Tawfiq Khoury and his wife, Richel, who shared the SAS “Couple of the Year” award. The local building industry turned out in force to applaud as one of its own stepped into the spotlight of civic recognition. Tawfiq Khoury is the founder and chief executive of Pacific Scene, one of the country’s largest home builders.

The banquet committee, in fact, included a most unusual position, calling for a chairman of the real estate division. Pardee Construction Co. executive Mike Madigan filled the post and said that he had found it an easy enough task to recruit so many representatives of the building industry. “They’re feeling better about life now,” he said, in an apparent reference to the defeat of San Diego slow-growth propositions on the Nov. 8 ballot.

San Diego Chamber of Commerce chairman Bill Nelson and his wife, Lollie, headed the committee. Bill Nelson said that turn-away business had been expected from the beginning.

“We knew we’d have to turn away at least a few tonight, because this is a cause that has gotten to the hearts of everybody, and the affair has become a real tradition,” Nelson said. “There’s also the simple fact that Tawfiq and Richel are so universally admired.”

The Khourys stepped into their roles with some ease, having chaired the 1987 Meals-On-Wheels banquet that honored then-Police Chief Bill Kolender and his wife, Lois. Early in the evening, Tawfiq Khoury commented that he and Richel have decided to decline further honors and chairmanships for at least one year in order, Khoury said, “to make room for new talent.”

However, Khoury added, he and his wife were pleased to headline a benefit for this charity.

“This is the type of organization I like because it’s all done by volunteers,” he said. “Every penny raised goes directly to programs, as opposed to other groups that have such high overheads. If we’re serious about keeping government out of our lives, I think it’s necessary to encourage volunteers.”

Proceeds from the dinner-dance were expected to reach $115,000, a figure that amounts to about 25% of the privately supported Meals-On-Wheels’ annual budget. The program serves nearly 600 clients who live at home and are unable to cook their own meals. Although Senior Adult Services describes the typical client as an 81-year-old widow who lives alone, the list ranges from those in their early 20s to several centenarians. A volunteer force of about 1,600, all of whom work one or two days a month, delivers the daily hot lunches and cold suppers.

Teresa Hardie, a Meals-On-Wheels client who celebrated her 103rd birthday this year, joined the throng that turned out to applaud the Khourys. Among others on the guest list were Junko and Larry Cushman, Norma and Sam Assam, Betsy and Ross Tharp, Jean and Al Anderson, Canice and Vincent Ciruzzi, Barbara Bry and Patrick Kruer, Beverly and Bill Muchnic, and Lee and Larry Cox.

Some of the 400 guests at Saturday’s gala preview of the San Diego Historical Society’s seventh annual “Celebrate the Holidays” must have grumbled that the holiday season seems to come earlier every year.

Even so, the fresh pine scent radiated by a dozen towering Christmas trees touched an immediate chord in almost everyone who entered the site of the soon-to-be-constructed Museum of San Diego History in Balboa Park’s Casa de Balboa. The thought that Thanksgiving still lay six days in the future was forgotten as the guests scrambled off on tours of the 26 holiday “vignettes” that form the backbone of this ever-more-popular San Diego tradition.

The vignettes, put simply, are small rooms and scenes composed by local designers to reflect the ways that well-known San Diegans and out-of-town celebrities might spend the holidays, although the general trend this year seemed to be in the direction of fantasy. Less likely denizens also are represented, especially in the “Alley Cat Christmas” scene designed by Matt Stevens in honor of the city’s strays. Whether the cats depicted by Stevens deserve to be honored might be open to debate, since they are gathered around a cooking pot in which they hope to prepare their Christmas mouse bourguignon , but as the saving hitch, the scene reveals that every mouse in town has been too quick on its paws for the fumbling felines.

The roving guests left trails of cookie crumbs as they traveled past such exhibits as “Savory Suppers and Fashionable Feasts,” a collection of Victorian-era serving pieces on loan from the Smithsonian Institution that includes such one-time necessities of the table as strawberry forks and orange cups (these last have curved hooks on which to impale the fruit). Formal scenes dominate this year; one favorite is hosted by Pasadenans Alice and Joseph “Trader Joe” Coulombe, opera buffs whose “Fantasy of the Opera” depicts a private box at La Scala looking over a trompe l’oeil view of the interior of the famous Milan theater.

Painstaking trompe l’oeil (“fool the eye”) work seems quite the thing at Celebrate the Holidays. “A Rainy Day Pastime at Leixlip Castle” features a painted room and drenched outdoor view at the 12th Century Irish castle owned by brewery magnate Desmond Guinness; the more cheerful “Notte de Natale” Italian villa scene designed for Tommi and Bob Adelizzi is an elaborate bit of wishful thinking that looks at Capri from an exquisite dining room.

The Celebrate the Holidays committee found some rather unusual hosts, among them Brother Timothy, cellar master of the Christian Brothers winery, whose “Toasting the Holidays” includes a tree trimmed with a sampling of his famous corkscrew collection, which numbers about 1,500. And although nostalgia predictably holds sway at the exhibit, astronaut Wally Schirra’s “Christmas Galaxy” invites viewers to imagine themselves celebrating Christmas in the depths of space, with a whirling constellation of Elizabeth Sclappi ornaments lighting the scene from beyond the spaceship’s viewing ports.

Celebrate the Holidays will be open daily, except Mondays, through Dec. 11. Admission is $6 per person; call the San Diego Historical Society.