Radical Party : Settlement: Retired Sunset Hall activists gather to celebrate a legal victory.

As retirement home parties go, the celebration that took place Thursday in the jacaranda-shaded courtyard at Sunset Hall was a typically quiet affair. Old men and women, some leaning on walkers, sat by a goldfish pond and waited for the usual amenities--plates of cake, plastic glasses filled with weak champagne, subdued entertainment.

But because this was Sunset Hall, Los Angeles’ only retirement home for aged activists, the party would just not be a party without a liberal--make that radical--dose of rhetoric.

Stepping up to the cake cart to blow out a row of candles, 86-year-old John Day thundered: “This is a real victory for the progressive forces! We are setting an example here!”

Day joined 15 of the hall’s 26 elderly occupants to celebrate a March 13 settlement of a year-old lawsuit that threatened the home. The settlement will allow the occupants to continue living at Sunset Hall, which had been the target of a takeover effort by a private developer.

The developer, Joseph Cofre, had sued in March, 1990, to assume control of the home, accusing the nonprofit corporation that runs Sunset Hall of reneging on a deal to sell the property. Cofre had contended he “incurred damages due to the delay in obtaining possession.”

But on March 13, in an agreement filed with Los Angeles County Superior Court, Cofre agreed to terminate the suit in return for the occupants’ promise not to ask for lawyers’ fees, said Jan Goodman, a lawyer for Sunset Hall’s occupants and the nonprofit corporation.

“The legal victory keeps the home alive, but everyone here has contributed to that spirit,” Goodman said.

Over the last year, the threat to the hall’s existence galvanized its elderly occupants, rekindling flames of activism that had sputtered with age. Although there was little they could do to aid their lawyers, the occupants had to contend with an even more difficult task--raising funds to keep the hall alive financially.

Despite an operating deficit that runs between $5,000 and $8,000 a month, the appeals by the old firebrands have brought in thousands of dollars and attracted the support of several celebrities, including actor Burt Lancaster and folk singer Pete Seeger, who put on a concert for the hall, raising $26,000.

But the hall, which once had as much as $76,000 in its coffers, Goodman said, is now operating in the red. “We’re trying anything we can think of to get into the black,” she said.

To that end, Sadie Doroshkin Tomkin, 90, a retired activist fund-raiser, now makes the rounds of Unitarian Universalist churches in the Los Angeles area, giving speeches on behalf of the hall, which was founded in 1924 by the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles. Goldie Maymudes, 89, once a progressive teacher, attends board meetings. Day, an unabashed former union organizer and Communist Party member, mails letters and makes phone calls--the organizer’s stock in trade.

“This is our way of keeping the hall alive,” Day said in the booming voice of a man accustomed to speaking without amplification. “I’ve sent out letters to Chicago, Kansas City, Australia. By God, we’ve got friends all over the world!”

Day is stooped now, clutching a cane to hobble along. But he once roamed the southern and midwestern United States, from Little Rock, Ark., to St. Louis, preaching a populist, pro-union, anti-war gospel that “could get a man hung if he didn’t watch out.”

Day saw his mentor, an anarchist he could only recall as “Ol’ Man Munson,” clapped into irons and trundled off to jail during World War I for opposing military conscription on constitutional grounds.

“And so here we are fighting another damned war,” Day muttered as champagne was handed around. “Makes you wonder what we learned.”

He grew quiet for a second, then cleared his throat and laughed. “Well, at least we here have won our own little war,” he said.

Nearby, Tomkin, wearing a pink pantsuit, sat in the sun and listened, smiling. Once an activist in Venice, Tomkin said she prizes Sunset Hall because “we’re completely free here. No one manhandles us like at other places. We’re free to say what we think, argue a little, raise a ruckus if it’s called for.”

She sat quietly while Day talked of victory, applauded when he was done, then waited for her slice of shortcake.

“Every day, we realize this is just not another old age home,” she said. “I think we’re probably some of the luckiest old folks in the world.”