Oh Mercy, Nurse, What a Birthday!

A pair of centenarians met over a glass of pink Champagne Saturday, not just to mark the fact of surviving a turbulent century but to send their hopes for a second century rising heavenward on skiffs of evanescent bubbles.

Mercy Hospital and Medical Center and its slightly older co-dowager, Hotel del Coronado, neither notably wrinkled after more than 100 years, formed a sisterly partnership to celebrate the closing of the hospital’s centennial year.

The union, while unusual in the local scheme of things, was not an unlikely pairing. Rita Neeper, chair of the Mercy Centennial Ball, said hotelier Larry Lawrence specifically requested that the ball be held at the Del, and guaranteed the availability of both the Crown Room and the Grand Ballroom.

Rather astonishingly--given the generally frantic tenor of nonprofit organizations’ campaigns at present--the ball was given as the only fund-raiser of Mercy’s centennial observance, even though it marked the conclusion of a yearlong round of galas, receptions and other public functions. Given as the 21st annual Mercy Ball, the Centennial Ball broke several records, including the amount of funds raised.

The Mercy Hospital Foundation expects net proceeds to exceed $150,000. This year’s beneficiary is the Mercy Clinic, which accommodates about 30,000 patient visits annually without regard to the ability to pay.

The party sold out at an overflow, turn-away attendance of 693, a crowd so large that the ficus trees ordered as part of the Grand Ballroom decor had to be canceled to make room for more tables.

“We’re closed out, we turned people away, and I’m amazed and outstandingly happy,” said Neeper. “I wanted to cut the party off at 650 guests, but it just kept inching up. You can only fit so many people in that ballroom if you don’t want them to be sardines.”

To an extent, Neeper found herself the fortunate mistress of a party that sold itself. Heavily supported by the hospital and Mercy Foundation boards, the ball also attracted an extraordinarily heavy percentage of the physicians associated with Mercy. If one insisted upon having a medical emergency Saturday, the Del’s Grand Ballroom definitely was the place to be.

The oversized committee mined the pockets of all those physicians by staging a cocktail-hour silent auction of more than 100 items, ranging from the usual dinners and getaways to a guaranteed cruise aboard the Sail America’s 1992 America’s Cup entry and a copy of the best-selling “Millie’s Book,” autographed not only by First Lady Barbara Bush but by first dog Millie, whose inky paw print adorned the frontispiece. This particular offering fetched a bid of $1,100.

The auction--raucous, as only silent auctions can be--was given in the recently refurbished Crown Room, which put on a cheerier face than in the past but echoed rather too loudly to the incessant cajoling of the auction master. Among those attempting to speak above the din was Sister Mary Jo Anderson, Mercy’s vice president for community relations and a principal overseer of the centennial observation.

“This is the finale of the centennial year,” she said, allowing a trace of enthusiasm to enter her tone. “The whole purpose of the year has been to celebrate our presence in the community, and it’s been an awfully nice year for it. On Monday, it’ll be back to business as usual, but we’ll also be launching the next 100 years and looking forward to the new millenium.”

Foundation vice president Paulette Gibson offered a vision of the hospital’s next hundred years, which she predicted will not differ markedly from the past. “The next century for Mercy will be another century of caring,” she said, quoting Mercy’s centennial slogan.

The close of the auction sent the guests down the corridor to the ballroom, where Neeper took the microphone to announce that, thanks to the time change that would take place the next morning, the dancing had been extended.

“You’ve all been so good that you can stay and dance an extra hour,” she told the crowd. Whether this was music to the ears of the Bill Green Orchestra and Harvey and the 52nd Street Jive, which alternated on stage, was not immediately obvious. Bill Green perhaps signaled his acquiescence to the schedule by striking up “In the Mood.”

The opening of the hotel predated the hospital by three years, and the antique mood of the ballroom would have suited a Mercy Ball in 1890, had the hospital then been quite grand enough to stage such an event. Mercy President Richard Keyser noted the closeness of the two institutions’ centennials, but also pointed out their quite different beginnings; Mercy was founded in 1890 as a dispensary when two Sisters of Mercy, Mother Mary Michael Cummings and Sister Mary Alphonsus Fitzpatrick, arrived from Colorado with all of $50 between them. The current hospital employs more than 2,000 and has a medical staff of more than 1,300.

Keyser also introduced Lawrence and his wife, Shelia, who slipped away from a bat mitzvah celebration for one of Lawrence’s granddaughters in another of the hotel’s ballrooms just long enough to greet the Mercy guests. Lawrence, standing in front of the same light-edged “100” sign that illuminated the stage when the hotel gave its memorable centennial in 1987, told the crowd: “This is one of the most wonderful and beautiful occasions this place has ever catered.”

The catering did, in fact, take a rather more elaborate course than at the usual hotel function. The meal opened with pasta in red pepper puree and continued with salads arranged like miniature formal gardens, roasted beef tenderloin in sun dried tomato sauce and individual chocolate truffle cakes. Slender crystal columns supported floral arrangements of white spider mums and Oriental greenery tied with sashes of gilded ribbon.

Former hospital chiefs of staff and their wives served as host couples. This group included Homer and Betty Peabody, Jerome and Lucy Heard, Douglas and Lynn Mooney, George and Rita Zorn, David and Elissa Subin, Richard and Marilyn Doyle, John and Barbara Riley, Ralph and Joanna George and Robert and Mary Ann Jacobs. Ruth Carpenter, whose late husband, Dr. Walter Carpenter, was a Mercy chief of staff, joined the host ranks with escort Tom Fleming.

Retired Bishop Leo T. Maher headed a guest list that included former Baja California Gov. Roberto de la Madrid, Linda and Frank Alessio, Vangie and Dick Burt, Sandra and Douglas Pay, Ruth and Jim Mulvaney, Mary Brito, Carol and Mike Alessio, Kay and Bill Rippee, Susan and Gordon Bartow, Lynn and Frank Silva, Mim and Al Sally, Peggy and Peter Preuss.