Circle 1000 Brunches Out With Ueberroth : Supporters: Members of a fund-raising group for Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach get a thank-you.

Thank-you was delivered with brunch Wednesday to 450 supporters of the Patty and George Hoag Cancer Center in Newport Beach. Members of Circle 1000, a fund-raising group for Hoag Hospital, met at the Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach for coffee, eggs and a postprandial speech by former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth.

The brunch is an annual event for the 4-year-old group, which has raised an estimated $900,000.

For Starters

The buzzing banquet hall was gaveled to silence by Ueberroth’s wife, Ginny, a cancer survivor and one of the founders of the group. “It’s wonderful to see you all--especially the men,” she said. “This group was started by women but it’s nice to begin to have some male support.”

Before digging into plates of fresh fruit and baskets of muffins, guests stood and recited the pledge of allegiance, led by Ginny Ueberroth, then bowed their heads for Patricia Cox’s invocation.

Main Course

Those in the room who didn’t know Ueberroth personally--he lives with his wife in Laguna Beach and turns up occasionally on the society circuit--had surely read about him. President of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee. Time magazine Man of the Year. Commissioner of major league baseball. If guests thought his high profile might have given him a big head, they were in for a surprise.

He accepted their invitation to speak “because Ginny told me to,” he said.

Then he wondered why he had been asked. “I figured it was because, first . . . I’m free.” And second: “I’m not very smart.”

Winning his audience through self-deprecation, Ueberroth elaborated. Graduation day at San Jose State University found him “in the top 83% of my class.” As an unknown travel agent selected to run the ’84 Olympic Committee, he discovered--”as our current vice president knows”--that reporters really do dig up your school records. “I didn’t think I was off to a great start when the papers reprinted (my college application), and where it said, ‘Church Preference,’ I’d written, ‘red brick.’

“Not very smart,” Ueberroth repeated, and by then the crowd was his.

He was smart enough to stick to uplifting themes the rest of the way. Using vignettes from his years in business and sports, he skimmed the surface of issues such as hunger, the homeless, education and government--and prescribed, as a key part of their solution, more “caring.”

“If enough people care in a free society,” he said, “anything is possible.”

Personal Note

Toward the end of his half-hour, Ueberroth spoke movingly on the subject that had brought this fund-raising group together in the first place: cancer. “This is tough for me,” he said, “so I want to get through it quickly.”

He told guests how he had lost his mother and sister to cancer and how, when his wife was diagnosed with a malignancy in 1976, he “collapsed. I was totally incapable of doing anything.”

He praised the doctors and especially the hospital volunteers “who grab you and put their arms around you and help you get through it. That’s the special art of giving, and that’s what you have.”

Faces

Among guests were Sandy Sewell, founder of Circle 1000; Dr. Robert Dillman, medical director of the Patty and George Hoag Cancer Center, and Michael Stephens, president of Hoag Hospital.

Also seen were Lynn and Evan Thomas, Kelli Hayde, Donna Crean, Anabel Konwiser, Sandy Stone, Judy Swedlund, Rita Teller and Susan Phillips.