Many Teary Farewells for USC’s Provost

Los Angeles is losing one of its most popular couples. Cornelius (Neal) Pings is already working in Washington as the new president of the prestigious Assn. of American Universities (AAU). The AAU is the organization of 54 major research universities in the United States and two in Canada.

Marjorie Pings has stayed behind to sell their Pasadena house, but joins him late this month--exhausted, no doubt, after the teary farewells.

Neal Pings has been USC’s provost for 12 years. Before that, he was vice provost at Caltech and dean of graduate studies, and earlier the founder of Stanford’s chemical engineering department. (As a young man, all he ever really wanted, he confided to friends at Linda and Jim Dickason’s “keep the flag flying” dinner at the Valley Hunt Club, was to be the president/tycoon of Shell Oil.)

Marcia Hayden, Kathleen McCarthy and Jayne Sullivan host an upcoming luncheon at the California Club for Marjorie, Roberta Hartnack another, Marianne Pardee another. Dr. William and Janice Corey gave a small at-home dinner, Dr. Allen and Weta Mathies another. Linda and Tom Maudlin, Regina and Chuck Leimback and Charles and Lorna Reed joined for Los Angeles Country Club revelry. Virginia and Si Ramo hosted a parting at Chasen’s.

Also Tournament of Roses president Gary Hayward and the tournament’s football committee chairman Harriman Cronk co-hosted a dinner at the Huntington, Ritz-Carlton. Caltech President Dr. Tom Everhart and Dr. Fred Anson hosted a reception at Caltech’s Athenaeum. The USC women’s athletics board produced joviality at El Chollo near campus.

At a Town and Gown campus reception for the Pingses, USC President Steven Sample surprised Pings by giving him the antique stand-up desk he has used for years, and two nights later Sample and his wife, Kathryn, entertained the Pingses and 200 others at their Mudd Estate in San Marino.

But Tuesday was the topper. Sample presented Pings with the rarely-bestowed USC Presidential Medallion. And Cardinal Roger Mahony has sent them off with prayers and hugs.

We’ll miss their vitality; but they’ll keep a condo in Pasadena to be here for those certain football games. Notre Dame? Oh, yes.

FULL MOON: Gala chairman Helene Galen likes perfection. So, wouldn’t you know? With Frank Sinatra and Natalie Cole as warbling stars, with “Fly Me to the Moon” the theme, with moon rocks for ambience, there was also a real full moon over the Marriott’s Desert Springs Resort. The black-tie gala for 1,100 was the final glow on the two-day Frank Sinatra Celebrity Invitational (golf) to benefit the Barbara Sinatra Children’s Center at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage and the Desert Hospital in Palm Springs.

Former President Gerald and Betty Ford, Adm. Alan and Louise Shepard, former Ambassador to Belgium Leonard Firestone and his wife, Caroline, and the desert’s Judy and Marshall Gelfand and Cydney and William Osterman joined the King brothers--Robert, Michael and Roger--and Tom and Jillie Selleck and bunches more.

THE TOPS: Mary O’Connell is new president of Las Madrinas’ board of directors, succeeding Ann Barrett. And, it’s official--$500,000 donated to the Las Madrinas Program of Molecular Pathology at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles, most from the December debutante ball. Also on the board: Robin Nenninger, Daisy Spurgin, Peggy Galbraith, Susan Armistead, Kacey McCoy, Barbara Fountain, Josselyn McAdam and Brooke Young.

TWO DRINKS: There was sort of a “Really?” gasp from the members of the Blue Ribbon of the Music Center of Los Angeles at its “Women’s Health in the ‘90s” symposium last week when Dr. C. Noel Bairey, director of preventive cardiology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, suggested two alcoholic drinks a week was enough for anyone.

Well, she waivered, “If you’re French, yes, you can drink red wine; it seems to help the French.”

The meeting, planned by Nancy Vreeland and Iris Cantor, and moderated by CBS medical correspondent Dr. Bob Arnot in the Mark Taper Forum, took on seriousness with several of the speakers suggesting political activism on the part of women. Summarized Vreeland at the luncheon following in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion: “We all must become activists with our health and with women’s health in general.”

She echoed Arnot’s, “The next step in women’s medicine is what you can do for yourself.”

Dr. Peter Greenwald spoke on cancer, Dr. Susan Love on breast care, Dr. Howard Judd on hormones, Dr. Bairey on cardiology, Dr. Lila Nachtigall on menopause and Dr. Frank Kamer on plastic surgery.

Robin Parsky took Dr. Bairey to heart. Said Bairey, “One in a million dies of AIDS, one in 10,000 dies of murder, one in 5,000 of an auto accident and one in two of heart disease.”

ESCALATION: Attorney John Argue and the Skid Row Development Corp. hosted a Los Angeles Athletic Club cocktail fete benefiting Transition House (for the homeless) and Mayor Tom Bradley . . . Anne Douglas honored her friend, former Beverly Hills mayor Vicki Reynolds, at a cocktail party celebrating Reynolds’ selection as honoree at the Beverly Hills Education Foundation’s gala March 27.

KUDOS: Following in the limelight of Ted Turner, Peter Ueberroth and Kirk and Anne Douglas, Robert Goizueta (chairman of the Coca-Cola Co.) and his wife, Olguita, nabbed the Jacoby Award at UCLA’s 1993 Neil H. Jacoby International Award Dinner at the Regent Beverly Wilshire as 400 dined and danced. Constance Towers Gavin emceed . . . To Buckley School, raising funds for “the dedicated faculty” at its 60th anniversary gala headed by Jan Seligman at the Beverly Hilton. (Paul Anka crooned special lyrics for special teachers.)