Sweet Blossoms at End of Rainbow
When it arrived, it looked like any gala invitation--an elegant white envelope addressed in flowing, black script.
But inside, it wasn’t.
Instead of shouting its message with Day-Glo and glitz, this one whispered, dared you to ponder the cause behind the celebration.
This one, the invitation to the Orange Blossom Ball held on Saturday night, showed a tiny boy staring out of a window flooded with a rainbow.
Thanks to the Orangewood Children’s Home, James Thegerstrom--the invitation’s designer--knows all about rainbows. “They’re my symbol for the home,” he says. “It’s magical, you know what I mean?”
When he was 16, Thegerstrom spent one month at Orangewood--a home for neglected and abused children. “It was the best vacation I ever had,” he says. “My home situation was so unstable, so tense, it was hard for me to press on.
“I couldn’t be who I was. I wanted to take care of everyone, but I couldn’t. I was only growing up myself.”
Thegerstrom felt safe at Orangewood. “Blessed,” he says, “like maybe I could control my destiny.”
So when the recent graduate of the Otis Parsons School of Art and Design was invited to create the invitations for one of Orange County’s A-list balls, he thought “rainbow.”
“But I didn’t want it to have a faraway, elusive quality,” he says. “I wanted it to land right outside the boy’s window. That’s the way it feels at Orangewood.”
For Thegerstrom, 22, the invitation’s big teddy bear represents the home’s readiness. “The home is always there for a child if he needs it,” he says.
With scholarship funds from the Orangewood Children’s Foundation, Thegerstrom was able to attend design school. Control his destiny. “Orangewood is the best of anything of its kind,” he says. “It has to be.”
The rainbows worked their magic. In a time when gala-goers are hard to come by, 800 guests poured into the Hyatt Regency Irvine for “Keeping the Promise” which grossed $380,000 for the Orangewood Children’s Foundation.
And not only did James Thegerstrom attend, he was one of the VIPs who attended the pre-gala reception held for underwriters.
On his arm was girlfriend Dana Milmeister. (Sidelight: In order to sketch the invitation, Thegerstrom had to borrow Dana’s teddy bear. “I never had one,” he explained. Then last week, Dana presented him with a teddy bear for his birthday.)
This year’s gala, which featured a performance by pop/Western songbird Crystal Gayle, marked the second year in a row that Orangewood graduates attended.
“Last year, committee member Tom Tucker said, ‘We never have any kids!’ ” noted Kathryn Thompson, gala co-chairwoman with Willa Dean Lyon. “So Tom bought a table for some of the graduates that the foundation was helping through school. This year, he did it again. Wonderful man.”
On tap for Thegerstrom and his pals was a sit-down dinner featuring a tomato flower bouquet served up with seafood and two caviars (this course awaited guests when they entered the ballroom, a nice touch), medallions of veal with white Cabernet wine sauce, and chocolate macadamia-nut torte. And of course the table overlays were iridescent--sporting every color of the rainbow.
During the VIP reception, Gayle--whose flowing black hair grazed her ankles--talked about her own childhood. “I had a good one, but my father died when I was young,” she said. “Luckily, I had a strong mother.
“I have two children of my own--a girl, 7, and a boy, 5,--and I look at them and know how much I love them, how much I love to take care of them. When I think of the children who don’t have that, I just want to gather them up in my arms.”
Guests included Nancy and William Steiner, the foundation’s executive director; William Lyon, chairman of the Orangewood board (who noted that $2.2 million of the $3.75 million needed to expand the Orangewood facility from 166 to 235 beds had been raised); Gus Owen, husband of Kathryn Thompson; Jo Qualls, vice president of Tiffany & Co. (donor of the favors--champagne flutes presented in those famous Tiffany-blue boxes); George and Judie Argyros (stunning in a glitzed-out red gown); Janice and Roger Johnson; Joyce and Tom Tucker; Deeann and Al Baldwin; Rick and Nancy Muth; Elizabeth and Tom Tierney; and Emma Jane and Orange County Supervisor Tom Riley.
