City of Hope Reaps a Bonanza

More than $3 million was raised for the City of Hope when the Food Industries Circle, a group of retailers, broker organizations, distributors and manufacturers, staged its 14th annual Harvest Ball at the Century Plaza Hotel.

It was, in the words of Circle president Al Marasca, a time to “transcend the rivalries of the game of business.”

The $3.1 million raised in 1989--chiefly through the group’s Coupons of Hope program and dinner ticket sales--was a new record.

The theme of the Friday event was “An Evening on the Orient Express.” A pre-dinner cocktail reception featured foods from the countries served by that famous train, each dispensed from a booth decorated in European style.

Inside the ballroom, guests listened to Big Band tunes from Horace Heidt Jr. and his orchestra, while thumbing through the souvenir program--a hefty volume the size of a phone book filled with advertisements from food companies, retailers, and, strangely enough for a medical center benefit, ads for Marlboro and Newport cigarettes.

Among the guests on hand were Dr. Sanford M. Shapero, president and CEO of the City of Hope; Richard S. Ziman, chairman of its board of directors; dinner chairman Maurice Charlat; Harland Polk, chairman of the Coupons of Hope program; and 1,800 other guests.

After an invocation and the Pledge of Allegiance, guests dined on steak, broccoli, potatoes and fresh berries while the Modernaires sang and video screens set up around the ballroom flashed images of the City of Hope and past Harvest Balls.

Charlat made the after-dinner speech, thanking past presidents of the Food Industry Circle, and presenting Marasca with a commendation from the city of Los Angeles for his work with the Circle.

But the special guests of the evening were three people who had been directly helped by the City of Hope; the video screens displayed brief retrospectives of their lives before they were brought out in person.

As a child, Stephen Wayne Miller received treatment at the City of Hope for cancer. Now a senior at West Covina High School, Miller was there, along with Marilyn Gaffney, who had had treatment for leukemia at the City of Hope several years ago and had gone on, with her husband, to adopt several difficult-to-place children.

The guests seemed to respond most to young Tuhk Potter, an Oregon boy who was diagnosed at the age 4 as needing a bone marrow transplant. Potter, an amateur singer, was seen on video performing for his siblings; they all came on stage at the program’s end with Gaffney and Miller to sing a song thanking City of Hope for its help in their medical recoveries.

The program concluded with each guest taking a penlight favor from the table and illuminating the room with 1,800 points of light, symbolizing both the medical center and the assistance provided by the Food Industries Circle.