Fete for Developer Raises $300,000 for City of Hope
Local land barons honored one of their own last week at a big-ticket dinner that raised $300,000 for the City of Hope, a cancer research and treatment center in Duarte.
South County developer Kathryn Thompson was this year’s recipient of the annual Spirit of Life award given by the Construction Industries Alliance, a fund-raising group for the medical center.
About 700 builders, developers and members of related industries paid $250 each to attend the awards dinner on Thursday at the Irvine Hilton and Towers. Benefit proceeds will be used for a research project of Thompson’s designation, said City of Hope spokesman Ernie Spickler.
“Now that we have the money, we’re going to ask her what she’d like it to go for, what kinds of projects interest her,” he said. In the meantime, the “Kathryn G. Thompson Research Fellowship” money will be deposited in the medical center’s general fund, Spickler said.
Crooner Pat Boone emceed the awards ceremony, revealing, in his opening comments, that his 81-year-old “Daddy” was a builder in Nashville, Tenn.
“Daddy would be in hog heaven tonight,” Boone told the builder big shots.
Tapped for speeches were Alliance chairman John Lusk and Alliance president William Lyon.
Lusk, who read a five-minute pep talk from index cards, described the 93-acre, 55-building City of Hope facility and said it operates on an annual budget of $164 million.
He also sang the praises of volunteerism, giving a mixed-metaphor nod to his industry comrades: “There would be no City of Hope without the dedicated army of volunteers which make up the nationwide City of Hope family.”
Lyon followed with words about the honoree. “She’s certainly all those great things that have been said about her at many award dinners like this before,” he said, “so I won’t dwell on her long and illustrious resume.”
Lyon said Thompson “belongs to more organizations than anybody I know” and has contributed money “clear out of proportion to what others have done.”
He got the biggest laugh of the evening with this sequence:
“It hasn’t been easy for Kathryn to be a builder in a man’s world. Kathryn is a very beautiful woman, and it’s disarming. Most men in business are disarmed (by) a beautiful woman, but they all relate that somehow to an airhead.
“Kathryn is not an airhead.”
The dinner committee was headed by William Lusk, James McNamara, Daniel Ciauri and Pat Poss.
Seated with Thompson and her husband, Gus Owen, were Thompson’s parents, Nita and Marvin Gore; Father Michael Harris, from Santa Margarita High School in Rancho Santa Margarita; Roger Johnson, chairman of Western Digital; George Engdahl, vice president of development, Orange County Performing Arts Center; and Orange County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley and his wife, Emma Jane.
