Ford Puts Twinkle, Pizazz in S.D. Galas

If anyone is bugged by the look of the upcoming Charity Ball, it will be designer Dick Ford’s fault.

On Feb. 6, there will be sufficient insects--praying mantises, bumblebees, dragonflies and others--in the Hotel del Coronado’s Crown Room and Grande Ballroom to make the more squeamish wish they had tucked a can of repellent into their pocket. Of course, all the creatures great and small (some of the bees will stand 5 feet tall) will be built by hand rather than netted in the wild, and will be painted in bright shades and splashed with glitter.

Above all, “The Magic Garden,” as this 84th anniversary edition of the Charity Ball will be named, will be lit by webs, falls and tumbling cascades of miniature twinkle lights. Thousands and thousands of twinkle lights. More twinkle lights than there are grains of sand in an hourglass--or at least in an egg timer.

It is not without reason that Ford is known as “the king of twinkle lights.”

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A self-described “valley boy,” Ford was born in the San Joaquin Valley town of Lindsay, a place better known as the home of the world’s largest ripe olive cannery than as a breeding ground for society gala designers. To this day he wears a Mickey Mouse watch to commemorate his birth in November, 1928, the same month in which Walt Disney introduced his resilient rodent to a waiting world.

The distance between a boyhood spent in town and on his family’s modest “grape ranch” and a career as a free-lance house designer and premiere party builder in San Diego was more than a hop, skip and jump. But Ford choreographed the move rather like he choreographs parties--and, for that matter, like he choreographed “Hop, Skip and Dance,” a much-awarded children’s television program that he presented live on San Francisco’s KQED from 1954-64.

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“I got a late start,” Ford said of his youthful career as a professional dancer. His training did not commence until after he had concluded studies in drama at the University of the Pacific in Stockton. And his dance studies, undertaken in San Francisco, were almost brought to an abrupt end by an auto accident that sent Ford to the hospital for nearly a month.

Oddly enough, the hospitalization, which by no means impeded Ford’s dance career, also introduced him to an acquaintance with the decorative arts, which he now lavishes, on a volunteer basis, on San Diego fund-raisers.

“I was just 21, and I had a brain concussion from which I’ve probably never recovered,” Ford said recently with a cheerful laugh. “The time in the hospital was dull, and although I was studying dance, visitors started bringing by boxes of decorative materials. At the end of three weeks, the whole bed was decorated.”

This newly discovered knack for turning simple materials into finely crafted objects led Ford, as a young father, to construct Christmas toys for his children from yarn and twisted copper wire. These toys rather quickly became famous, and San Francisco’s I. Magnin department store requested a sufficient supply to decorate a window on Union Square. Buyers from Neiman-Marcus saw them, put in an order and kicked off an avocation rather than a career.

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Ford remained in dance long enough to join a troupe that toured the West Coast in the early 1950s; a career highlight was as a soloist miming “Casey at the Bat” to the accompaniment of Arthur Fiedler and the San Francisco Symphony Summer Pops.

“I got into dance education so that I could make a living,” Ford said. In 1954, KQED requested that he host a live weekly program that would involve children at home in dance. “Hop, Skip and Dance” was scheduled to run for 13 weeks and instead lasted a decade.

After the conclusion of his television career, Ford turned to real estate ventures in Baja California and ultimately took up residence in San Diego. He turned to party designing only after he met his present wife, Annette, who was a member of Las Patronas, the La Jolla philanthropic group that presents the annual Jewel Ball.

Dixie Unruh, also a La Patrona at the time and a close friend of both Fords, was so taken by Dick Ford’s decorative abilities that she suggested he design the 1981 Jewel Ball, “Carousel.” When Unruh was named chairman of “Kaleidoscope,” the 1983 Jewel Ball, she turned to Ford to create a fantasy of colors and geometric shapes on the tennis courts of La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club.

“I would call Dick a party visionary because he doesn’t just design the decor but the mood of the evening,” Unruh said. “He has a marvelous sense of humor and his designs are whimsical, light and upbeat. You always feel like you’re at Disneyland when you enter a party that he has created.”

Both Ford and Unruh recall “Kaleidoscope” as a near disaster, since a freak August thunderstorm burst over the open-air ballroom before dawn on the morning of the ball--well after the sets, decorations and tables were in place.

“We were all frantic, but Dick was on the scene immediately,” Unruh said. “He saved the situation.”

“We had had to invent a shocking pink paint for the sets, since the color we wanted was not available,” Ford said. “When the rain hit, the paint ran, and all the sets had to be repainted the day of the ball. Then it rained again during the cocktail hour.”

The experience left Ford hardened against future disasters, such as at the 1988 RITZ (Rendezvous in the Zoo) gala at the San Diego Zoo.

“That year, the centerpieces were made of bread that we had cut and reassembled to look like gorillas,” he said. “The waiters weren’t allowed to serve during the program, which lasted so long that everyone was starving and started eating the centerpieces. By the time the parade of animals concluded, all that was left of our centerpiece was crumbs.”

The annual RITZ event, a perennial success for the zoo, is credited as Ford’s creation and unique contribution to San Diego fund-raising. Although the gala was Ford’s idea, he merely designed it until 1991, when he took an unusual step and assumed the chairmanship as well, for that year. RITZ started in 1984 as a semi-formal concert and dinner, but in 1986 La Jollan and perennial event chair Jane Fetter decided that a grander gala was in order. Once again, near-disaster spurred the creation of an extraordinarily lavish affair.

“We had designed RITZ to be given in the parking lot of Roosevelt Junior High,” Fetter said. “I was leaving for Australia one day when Dick called to say that we had to move the party to the zoo grounds because we couldn’t serve liquor on school premises. He had stayed up all night redesigning the party for the available space at the zoo, and we had to pave the area, take out trees and remove concrete berms and a fence. Dick created that party space, where RITZ now always is held, and I’ll always be one of his biggest fans.”

Over the years, RITZ has been ruled by 20-foot-high pink flamingos, by oversized gorillas and by other fantastic motifs--always draped and dripping with thousands of tiny, twinkling lights, the Ford party signature. While Ford has worked out the designs to the least significant-seeming detail, the work of building and painting the decorations is always given to La Jollan Liz Smith, another volunteer and another of Ford’s self-described “biggest fans.”

“Dick is absolutely fabulous, his ideas never stop,” Smith said. “His mind just goes constantly--I’ve never known anyone so creative. The really fabulous thing is that he sees the big picture, which a lot of artists don’t. And besides being an artist, he’s a choreographer and he choreographs every party. I’ve never turned Dick down when he asks me to build a party, and as soon as the Charity Ball decorations move out of my house, we’ll move in the materials for the 1993 RITZ the next day.”

Ford views himself in the same terms.

“When I design a ball, I want to help place the tables, because I’m a choreographer and terribly concerned with the use of space,” he said. “That’s why I’m excited about the Charity Ball, because I’m even choreographing a procession from the dinner in the Crown Room through the hotel courtyard and then to the ballroom. This is ‘The Magic Garden,’ and the guests are going to go through a magic garden on the way there.”

Details include entertainment by both Peter Duchin and his orchestra and the Platters, and sponsorship by the Cartier jewelry firm.

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Ford, who also designed the 1992 Jewel Ball and the October gala that opened the new Mary Birch Women’s Hospital at Sharp Memorial Hospital, is set to start designing “Pandamonium,” the 1993 RITZ, as soon as the Charity Ball has been concluded in a flutter of luminescent butterfly wings. It is a wearing schedule, especially for a volunteer, but Ford said he treats his avocation no differently than a fisherman who spends hours tying flies.

“Designing balls is my kind of sport, my hobby,” he said. “I don’t ski or play golf, and if I stayed around the house all the time I’d drive my wife crazy. But what I really like is that it’s creative. I’m going to keep at it.”

Ford’s promise should be good news to San Diego suppliers of twinkle lights.