Friendship Sinks Roots in Garden
Standing tall among the mean silhouettes cast by the ornamental plants in Gold Gulch Canyon, business-suited hombres and be-jeaned cowpokes faced off over beans and beef late Sunday afternoon. Tea-drinking followed.
The showdown in Balboa Park’s Japanese Friendship Garden--which included lessons in roping a wooden steer and an interlude of munching homemade peanut butter cookies--marked a milestone rendezvous for two groups with a long history of extending hands across the sea, the San Diego-Yokohama Sister City Society and the Yokohama-San Diego Friendship Committee .
Hosted by the garden and the local society, the “Western Buckboard Party” informally celebrated the 35th anniversary of the friendship pact between the two Pacific Rim cities and welcomed a delegation of about 160 visitors from Yokohama, including City Council President Masayuki Suzuki. Other members of the Yokohama city government joined the delegation, which at a formal banquet the following evening announced plans to provide financial assistance to the far-from-complete Japanese Friendship Garden.
Straw cowboy hats circulated as emblems of good fellowship among the well-dressed visitors and the 90 ranch-wear-clad locals, who also shared a chuck-wagon feast of barbecued steaks, ribs and chicken with potato salad and other essential bites of edible Americana.
As the largest of the 10 delegations sent by Yokohama during the history of the sister city agreement, Sunday’s group also may be the last to see the garden in its current modest, three-fourths of an acre layout. Grace Brophy, the garden’s executive director, said plans call to expand over an 11-acre site that will fill Gold Gulch Canyon and make this the second-largest Japanese garden in the United States, eclipsed only by a similar park in St. Louis. Asked for a time frame for the expansion, Brophy said: “As soon as we get the money.”
Some of those funds will be raised in Yokohama, home of the famous San-Kei-En garden from which the Balboa Park spread takes its Japanese name. Friendship Garden President Moto Asakawa characterized the gracefully landscaped space as “a piece of Japan here in San Diego for those who can’t go visit Japan. It’s a bit of cultural enrichment for all to enjoy, and there’s a sense of serenity here that cannot be found in many places.”
Guests included Richard Bundy, chairman of the Central Balboa Park Assn.; hotelier Anne Evans; local honorary consul for Japan James Wiesler; garden sponsor Kiyohide Shirai, president of Kyocera America, Inc.; San Diego-Yokohama Sister City Society President Talmah Gaw and her husband, Donald; Tadao Komuro; Colin Maclean, director of the Japan-America Society of Southern California; Philip Herr; Harold Kuhn; Marjorie Craig; Tom Yanagihara; Barbara Church and Haruko Crawford.
For the benefit of a group of children forced to take life one step at a time, the San Diego Youth Symphony waived its usual fee Saturday evening and coaxed 250 pairs of well-shod feet to wriggle in time to a pair of Strauss waltzes and the “Radetzky March.”
The concert by the internationally recognized symphony, which will depart shortly for a tour of Italy, capped the inaugural “Children Helping Children” benefit given for the San Diego Center for Children. That organization, founded in 1887 as the Women’s Home Assn., provides residential and out-patient services to children, aged 5 to 13, who are emotionally disturbed or have been abused. A new venture, and the inspiration for Saturday’s gala at the San Diego Marriott, is a $1.8-million center to be built in 1993 to provide clinical research in child and adolescent mental disorders.
Event chair Elsie Weston enlisted the aid of two other groups of youngsters to give the benefit a cheerful childlike theme; table centerpieces of paper dolls dancing around ribboned Maypoles were constructed by seventh-grade students at The Bishop’s School and by second graders at Francis Parker School.
“We hope this event will be annual and we hope the orchestra always will be involved,” said Weston, who estimated net proceeds in excess of $25,000. “It gives the children a good feeling to participate for the benefit of the less fortunate.”
Mark Hopper, the center’s president and executive director, praised the 70-member symphony for participating. “In organizations such as ours, we do really rely on volunteers. These kids working to help our kids is a wonderful community effort to raise awareness of the children at the center, and of how terribly they need help.” Bill Waite, member of an old-line San Diego family and a center board member, added: “The treatment programs now in existence for these poor little kids are dinosaurs, and we’re trying to do a lot better by them. The new research center is a major step in the right direction.”
The abbreviated evening followed the cocktail reception with a quick supper of Caesar salad and beef filet perigourdine , a few speeches and, finally, the 45-minute performance conducted by Youth Symphony director Louis Campiglia. The performance, undeniably delightful, opened with the overture to “La Forza del Destino” and swung through a movement of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 on the way to a lively Strauss program, the final number of which was conducted by the Center for Children’s medical director, Dr. W. Mark Shipman, who had bought the privilege at a silent auction.
On his way to take up the baton, Shipman paused at the microphone to tell the audience, “My heart is in my throat, and though I confess it’s partly fear, it’s because of what all of you are doing to help mentally ill and emotionally disturbed youngsters. Childhood should not be painful and childhood should not be full of fear. These young musicians are sending a message to our county, which is filled with angry, scared children.”
Shipman conducted as well as he spoke, and earned an extra ovation for the orchestra.
Among the guests were Barbara and Paul Hunter, Peggy and James Polak, Emma Lee and Jack Powell, Frances and Edwin Hunter, Anne and Michael Ibs Gonzalez, Barbara and Don Hunsaker, Frank Weston, Marlene and Michael Teitelman, Alison and Jon Tibbitts, Margaret Gooding, Mary-Lynn and State Sen. Wadie P. Deddeh, Georgette and Jack McGregor, Lillian and Bill Vogt, Kris Henyey and Loie Morris.
Singer Roberta Linn, Lawrence Welk’s original “Champagne Lady,” injected a little extra fizz into the “A Red Hot Night” benefit June 2 for the Rachel Grosvenor Family Center for Homeless Women and Children.
Rachel Grosvenor and her husband, Judson, partly hosted the black-tie dinner-dance for 200 at Tomato’s, a new Italian restaurant (the Grosvenors are Tomato’s landlords) in the Sports Arena district. Throughout the evening, guests marched dutifully between the buffets set up in the restaurant (pastas, pizza and other Italian fare) and an immense tent that sheltered tables and the stage. In addition to Linn, the entertainment schedule included the Rinaldi Strings, the Bill Green Orchestra and song-and-dance routines performed by a small troupe from the Starlight Musical Theatre.
The new Grosvenor Center, to be built and operated by the San Diego Rescue Mission, will enable the mission for the first time to offer shelter to women and children. Gardner Farrell of the Rescue Mission said, “It takes a pretty tough cookie to be at the services at night, have a homeless woman and kid come in and (have to) say, ‘We don’t have anywhere to put you.’ When the Rachel Grosvenor center is finished, in about eight months, we won’t have to say that anymore.”
Rachel Grosvenor, who provided a substantial gift to the Rescue Mission, said that her family moved to San Diego in 1956, the same year the facility opened. “The people at the mission have been doing this work so long that they know how to turn lives around. That’s what I really like about this group.”
The guest list included Valerie Preiss and Harry Cooper, Dolly and Jim Poet, Patty and Jack Vars, Bonnie and Bennie Lagasse, Virginia Monday, Patricia and Robert Lijewski, Susan Clifton and fiance Craig Grosvenor, Annette and Dick Ford, Barbara and Bill McColl, Mark Grosvenor, Suzanne Moore, Jane and Herb Stoecklein, Kay and Bill Rippee, and Eleanor and Al Mikkelsen.
