Scripps Benefit Draws Faithful

Go ahead and feel terribly self-congratulatory if you remember the Scripps Clinic “Heart Ambulance,” a medical advance of the 1960s that might seem antiquated today but arrested many a cardiac arrest then.

And it was the need to pay for that ambulance that gave us THE COMMITTEE, a group that can be forgiven for describing itself in capital letters since it gives capital parties for the benefit of Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation.

Although the “heart ambulance” became a memory when Scripps moved from downtown La Jolla to Torrey Pines Mesa, Scripps has evolved steadily as a major medical force and became a major topic--just in time for THE COMMITTEE’s Saturday dinner dance--since the clinic announced plans at the end of last week to merge with Scripps Memorial Hospitals.

Most inhabitants of the Northern Hemisphere reckon summer as starting June 21, but a relatively tiny group looks more to a social solstice that begins late in July with THE COMMITTEE party (sometimes, however it occurs irregularly and sometimes takes place in January, if at all) and continues on the following two weekends with the other big La Jolla summer escapades, the Jewel Ball and A Night in Monte Carlo.

Going to all three is the equivalent of attaining nirvana for those who really like to dress up and party hearty.

There was room for just 330 guests at Saturday’s event, held at Foxhill, the many-gardened estate of San Diego Union-Tribune publisher and longtime COMMITTEE member Helen Copley. The fairly small guest list was quite in keeping with the group’s insistence that the dinner-dance take the form of a private party, with the fund-raising aspect--while an essential ingredient--noted only in the most discreet murmurs. The invitations mentioned Scripps Clinic only on the back page.

One of the group’s founding members, Jo Bobbie MacConnell, explained the singular philosophy of the event.

“This is the party that we all would like to give for our friends,” she said. “This is for everybody we know and love. It’s not stilted or uncomfortable.”

Ann Jones, who joined recently, said “This party is like a family getting together.”

Another newer member, Alice Cramer, said she regarded the evening as a kind of town-gown convocation in a grand setting. “Tonight not only is one of THE COMMITTEE’s most beautiful parties, but a real showing of the talent we have in this community,” she said. “There are so many fine physicians and researchers here.”

The event also was a grand curtain-raiser for the La Jolla season. As always, the receiving line of committee members through which guests entered into the poolside cocktail area set a mannered, gracious tone. Dinner and dancing took place on a lawn on the other side of the formal mansion; the scene looked to be straight from a 1940s film with tables centered by palm tree-like arrangements of ferns that sprouted startlingly pink star-gazer lilies instead of coconuts.

The Bill Green Orchestra opened the dancing on a cautionary note with “Anything Goes,” and guests mobbed the open-air dance floor between the numerous courses of an elaborate meal that included saumon argenteuil , carbonades flamandes en chemise and mousse au cafe a l’italienne .

Since many committee members and guests either are current or former directors of the Scripps Clinic board, the hottest topic of conversation turned to the just-announced plan to re-merge the clinic with its former sister institution, the Scripps Memorial Hospitals. Clinic board chairman Gordon Luce, whose wife, Karon, is a longstanding member of THE COMMITTEE, described the merger as “a natural” and used a just-coined shorthand name for the new institution: “Scripps-Scripps.”

“The idea of combining the clinic and the hospital makes great sense service-wise, economically speaking and in terms of the greater good of the community,” said Luce, adding, “The confusion between the names that has endured for so long now will be over. And there are still hurdles ahead--the work isn’t done.”

Scripps Clinic Director Dr. Charles Edwards, whose wife, Sue, also is a well-established committee member, suggested that the joining of the two health care institutions is epochal in local history.

“This is one of the most important things that has happened in San Diego in a long time,” Edwards said. “These are two institutions that lived 40 years of their lives together (both were founded in 1924 by La Jolla philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps; her relative Sally Scripps Weston attended the event as a committee member) and jointly developed certain philosophies, and it makes a lot of sense that they get back together. It should have been done earlier,” Edwards said.

“Now that it will be done,” Edwards said, “it will be done not in the best interests of Scripps Clinic or the Scripps Hospitals, but in the best interests of the San Diego community.”

The attendance included Sue and Art Bell; Beverly Muchnic; Yvonne and Dan Larsen; Ruth and Jim Robinson; Peggy Siegener and her daughter, Sharon Siegener; Helen and Bennett Wright; Elinor Oatman; Houston socialite Mary Lee Merrett; Norma and Ollie James; Jean Stern; Anne Evans; Mary and Dallas Clark; Virginia and Jack Monday; Lollie and Bill Nelson; Carolyn and Dr. Cliff Colwell; Audrey Geisel; Kathy and George Pardee; upcoming Jewel Ball Chairwoman Susan McClellan and her husband, Craig; Jane and Tom Fetter; Ann and Peter Smith; actress Mercedes McCambridge; Mayor Maureen O’Connor and her husband Bob Peterson; Mavourneen O’Connor and her husband Dr. Tom Kravis; Liz and Chris McCullah; JoAnne and Frank Warren; Gretchen and Gus Colachis; Aaron and Chuck Jones; Houston banker and oenophile Leonard Rauch and fiancee Catherine Day; Cathie Hornsby with David Copley; Junko and Larry Cushman; Dixie and Ken Unruh; and Darlene and Donald Shiley.

SAN DIEGO--The receiving line at Friday’s 18th annual benefit of Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcala stretched from the front gates of the venerable mission through the garden, the church and into the parking lot-turned-party site, which made for a lot of handshaking and left the 400 guests ready for skewered carne asada and Spanish “rope” sausage hors d’oeuvres.

The gala, hosted in honor of the 221st anniversary of the mission’s founding by a nondenominational group called Los Patrones de Alcala, sometimes takes a Mexican theme but this year looked all the way back to 18th-Century Spain, whence came the friars who founded the mission and, along with it, San Diego and California. Betty and Ross Tharp co-chaired the event, which Betty Tharp said observed the “heritage from the Spaniards” while raising sufficient funds to renovate the pipe organ in the mission church.

Msgr. I. Brent Eagen joined the Tharps in the receiving line and said he hoped the tradition of mid-summer parties “will go on as long as the mission is here, and I hope that’s a long time. They’re a wonderful way for San Diego to celebrate its birthday and the founding of the mission.”

Flamenco dancers and mariachis performed before the dinner of salmon and caramel fudge cake, served at tables set with double-tiered topiaries of crimson roses; the Bill Green Orchestra followed.

Among those attending were Anne and Ken Brown; Kay and Bill Rippee; Linda and Frank Alessio; Mary Brito; the George Gardners; Mary and Jack Goodall; Jean and Ernest Hahn; Mary and Bruce Hazard; Lorie and Larry James; Harriet and Bud Levi; Lee and P.J. Maturo; Dorothea and David Garfield; Liz and Edward McIntyre; Phyllis and Anthony Terzich; Claire Tavares; Bishop Robert H. Brom; Dolly Ragan; Charlotte and Falck Nielsen; Robin and Paul Smithers; Eleanore and Marshall White; and Flora and Gordon Wiram.