L.A.’s All Abuzz With Activity, Openings

Los Angeles is bustling.

The Foundation for the Junior Blind opens its new Education Center on its seven-acre Windsor Heights campus Wednesday. The site’s grassy expanses and hilltop setting will provide pleasure for patrons financing new technology there for the multi-disabled blind. Planning the celebration luncheon are Barbara Factor Bentley, foundation chairwoman, and her husband, Joseph, active on the board. The foundation also is formulating a $10-million capital-development program.

Just recently, the new Joyce Eisenberg Keefer Breast Center at John Wayne Cancer Institute at Saint John’s Hospital and Health Center marked its grand opening, primed with a $1.8-million gift from Mrs. Keefer to establish the center.

The Natural History Museum joined with the city of Burbank and the Alexander Haagen Co. to establish the museum’s first branch, the Burbank Museum at 555 N. 3rd St. It opened with the exhibit “Backyard Monsters” (commonly known as insects). The museum features 5,000 square feet of traveling exhibits.

And, the Delancey Street Foundation’s new home at 400 N. Vermont Ave. in the former Midtown Hilton Hotel will offer opportunities for former felons, substance abusers and the homeless wishing to build a new life. Dr. Mimi Silbert is president and CEO.

As for the Los Angeles Hilton and Towers, it’s recently invested more than $350,000 in renovating the hotel in compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act.

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PAST PERFECT: Linda and Jim Dickason’s cocktail party at the California Club honored the California Historical Society’s executive director, Michael McCone, and the editor of California History, Richard Orsi. The society will host its annual conference in Pasadena in October and has plans to relocate its vast collections and Northern California offices to a new address in San Francisco. In the crowd were Jane Simpson, Polly Goodan, Nancy Holliday . . . Lyn and Norman Lear’s party at their home in Brentwood saluted Geoffrey Cowan on the publication of his book “The People v. Clarence Darrow.”

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PLAY BALL: Croquet, available at two of the homes on last month’s annual Windsor Square-Hancock Park Historical Society Home Tour, added a splash of frolic. Now members are seriously engaged in sending postcards to Caltech President Thomas E. Everhart. It’s all about preserving the beauty and vitality of the Bullock’s Wilshire building, which Caltech owns. The society wants to join Caltech in efforts to find a business enterprise for the site, “one sensitive as well to this location as the cultural landmark that it is.”

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KUDOS: He joined the YMCA in 1956 in Downey with a son in a Y-Indian Guide program. Since then, E.H. (Hu) Clark Jr., the retired board chairman of Baker Hughes Inc., has held virtually every volunteer leadership post in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Y. Last month he was named chairman of the 10-million member YMCA of the U.S.A. And that’s why he was feted by civic leaders last week at the Inter-Continental Hotel at a dinner chaired by Unocal Chairman and CEO Richard J. Stegemeier. In the crowd: newly elected Los Angeles YMCA board Chairman John E. Anderson and his wife, Marion; Sheriff Sherman Block and his wife, Alyce; Stephen and Ann Hinchliffe, and Stuart and Carrie Ketchum.

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SUMMER DEBS: The Pasadena Guild of Childrens Hospital will host its 32nd June Debutante Ball on June 19 at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington to benefit pediatric surgery. Patty Burschinger is chairwoman, assisted by Peggy Stewart, and a committee including Joan Bolton, Karen Hammond, Kathy Gillespie, Mikie Marsh, Harriet Plunkett, Cherry Bianchi, Tink Cheney, Martha Nasser, Jean Crabtree, Doris Ann Williams, Joan Caillouette, Pat Bakaly, Marcia Grace, Marie Jones, Veva McKee, Jean Higgins, Susie Miller, Joni Baker, Sally Boyle and Susan Seidel . . .

The Las Patronas Auxiliary of the Assistance League of Ventura County, led by former Angeleno Claire Stuart, hosts its 36th annual Presentation Ball on June 26 to benefit the Assistance League School in Oxnard and the Girls Club in Ventura. Marcia Drescher is ball chairwoman, assisted by Mary Massie of Camarillo.

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PRESENTATION: Cardinal Roger Michael Mahony returned last week from the grief in Guadalajara--the killing of Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo--to the joy of the Presentation Ball, staged by the Sisters of Social Service for their community work. Fourteen young women, carrying cardinal-red roses, were presented at the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton: Mary Frances Dee, Mary Gerstner, Leeanne Ducot, Marcy Dolle, Darcy Mullin, Kimberly Nuccio, Jennie Nunn, Ashley Polito, Deborah Doane, Cassandra Hennigan, Lisa Giuntini, Tannis Turrentine, Darby Woods and Anna Wisda.

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GIFTS AND DOLLARS: Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles is thrilled about its newest gift--$1 million from the John C. Tyler Trust Fund, established in 1973 after the death of John C. Tyler, a co-founder of Farmers Insurance Exchange. His wife, Alice, a generous benefactor who established the Tyler Prize, an annual $150,000 award for environmental achievement, died this spring. She was also generous to Childhelp and its efforts to aid abused children.

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MIDAS TOUCH: Volunteers, doing double duty in dire times, aren’t doing badly: Center Theatre Group Volunteers raised $211,504 at its “Angeles Night” . . . Banning Residence Museum boasted 5,000 visitors at its April Floriade for a $200,000 net . . . St. Vincent Medical Center Auxiliary’s “Time to Remember” benefit saluting Michael Landon will provide $200,000 for mammograms, says his widow, Cindy, honorary chairwoman . . . And the gathering at the home of interior designer Waldo Fernandez, hosted by Elizabeth Taylor, David Geffen and Sandy Gallin, produced a $100,000 check from the Elizabeth Taylor Foundation for Project Angel Food.