In This Corner, the La Jolla Version of ‘Meet the Press’

Amid quiches and canapes, there was no place like UC San Diego Chancellor Richard Atkinson’s home to play last week’s hottest game, “Meet the Press Secretaries.”

Any of the 100 local guests who hoped to engage the ear of a former presidential press secretary found the odds quite favorable for getting his wish since eight of the 10 who signed on to participate in last Friday’s “The Presidency, the Press and the People” symposium on the university campus were on hand at the Thursday reception.

James Brady and Jody Powell were no-shows, but NBC news commentator John Chancellor, who served as the symposium’s moderator, attended with his wife, Barbara, and made quite a splash with the carefully chosen list of influential friends of UCSD and of KPBS-TV, which taped the forum for local broadcast last week and for a PBS special that will air nationally later this year.

The lights in the reception rooms inexplicably and rather entertainingly flickered out periodically during the evening, but with so many luminaries present, few people seemed to notice the blackouts.

The evening was basically an instance of the “mingle and munch” phenomenon--the press secretaries, presumably all veterans of Washington’s rubber-chicken routine, seemed enthralled by the Ortega chili quiche--and it revealed a side of Beltway protocol probably unknown to the majority of the San Diego guests. Presidential press secretaries, or so it would seem, prefer to stand in corners, a pose that evidently prevents flanking movements by impatient glad-handers.

Newsman Bill Moyers, who served in the Johnson Administration, stood his ground in a corner of the dining room through most of the reception. Other corners became the temporary fiefdoms of the Ford Administration’s Ron Nessen and Reagan’s Larry Speakes.

There were exceptions to this rule, just as some of the men did not wear bow ties, which seem to be the secretaries’ sartorial secret sign. The garrulous Pierre Salinger, well remembered from the Kennedy years and now based in London as chief foreign correspondent for ABC News, roamed freely through the crowd, shaking hands, chatting at length and showing a preference for the toasted cheese canapes passed by servers.

George Reedy, who served Lyndon Johnson and now is a professor of journalism at Marquette University in Milwaukee, retired early to the terrace to examine the inclusive view of La Jolla and its cove offered. He huddled for a while with Chancellor Atkinson, who came outdoors to enjoy his pipe and stayed on to give the bartender explicit directions in the construction of Reedy’s preferred Martini (vodka, an olive and lots of ice).

Conversations often turned to the headier topics of the moment, such as Panama (Bush Administration spokesman Marlin Fitzwater was to have participated in the symposium, but he canceled after the invasion), but veered just as often in the direction of San Diego tourist opportunities. Moyers repeatedly asked guests to steer him to La Jolla’s best practitioner of California cuisine.

Both Atkinson and his wife, Rita, spent much of the evening in the receiving line, the post they regularly occupy at official functions given at their residence. Asked how she liked having more than 100 guests in her home nibbling sushi and turkey won-tons, Rita Atkinson shrugged and said, “Oh, I’m used to it.”

In addition to press secretaries--the list included George Christian, Ronald Ziegler and Jerald terHorst--the guest list also included a few who had served under them, including Margita White, who worked for the Nixon and Ford administrations. She arrived with close pal Gloria Penner of KPBS, who described the symposium as another indication of San Diego’s increasing prominence in national affairs.

“There are those who believe that, next to the President himself, the most powerful person in government is his press secretary, and I’m inclined to agree,” Penner said. “To have almost every one of the press secretaries together here in San Diego positions us, once again, as a national power base.”

KPBS Community Advisory Board Chairman Viviane Warren saw the symposium as benefiting the city, but she also thought it might aid in expanding important minds that are constantly subject to Washington’s peculiar myopia.

“It’s like bringing the Beltway here, like transplanting a little of Washington’s charismatic ‘oomph’ to San Diego,” she said. “But it’s also good for the press secretaries. They’ve never been all together outside the Beltway, and their meeting in San Diego gives them a fresh perspective for their exchange of ideas.”

Whether exchanging ideas or simply the addresses of La Jolla eateries, the press secretaries seemed to have a good time at the Atkinsons’, as did the local guests, among them KPBS Executive Director Paul Steen; UCSD Associate Vice Chancellor Mary Lindenstein Walshok; Richard and Harriet Levi; Hugh and Pat Carter; Paul Marshall and Darlene Davies; Donald and Darlene Shiley; Art and Jeannie Rivkin; William and Anne Otterson; Harry and Susan Summers, and Marianne McDonald with Adrian Jaffer.

The 33 young women who will be presented at the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority’s 35th annual debutante tea and orientation Sunday learned, among other things, that they will be expected to wear floor-length white gowns with modest sleeves and billowing hoop skirts. The importance of the hoop skirts was repeatedly stressed to the debs, who met at the UC San Diego International Center and who, on the whole, seemed to take the information with youthful equanimity.

The sorority’s local Epsilon Xi Omega chapter expects an attendance of at least 900 at “Through the Years, a Vision Fair,” to be given March 31 at the San Diego Marriott. Proceeds from the event will fund scholarships to be awarded to 10 to 12 college-bound seniors at San Diego high schools, and will also fund such chapter projects as Neighborhood House, the Urban League and the United Negro College Fund.

The sorority also assists several Headstart programs in the county. “We think we’re doing some real dynamite things,” said chapter spokeswoman Cheeneah Armstrong, who added that in addition to attending parties and charm classes, the debs will be expected to engage in community service projects, such as assembling Easter baskets for homeless children and working in literacy programs. “The girls often will get together to choose, as a group, the service they wish to perform,” Armstrong said.

Chapter President Marsha Jamison said that more motives than might be readily apparent fuel her group’s enthusiasm for the annual debutante ball, which ranks as one of the city’s longer-running events.

“Our main focus for the girls is leadership enhancement, which is why they go through both cultural and volunteer experiences,” Jamison said. “All of these are designed to make the debs self-assured and confident by the end of the season. The proceeds go back to the community, and several years ago, we were the first organization to receive the San Diego Black Achievement Award, which always had gone to an individual.”

Some of the newly minted debutantes expressed both excitement and a bit of apprehension about their impending bows.