In the Spirit of Santa Marta

It was a Catholic Eastside hospital receiving a transfusion of secular downtown corporate support Friday when the Santa Marta Hospital Foundation held a black-tie fund-raiser at the Regent Beverly Wilshire.

The 110-bed acute-care facility in East Los Angeles operated by the Daughters of St. Joseph netted more than $250,000 with the help of, among others, Bank of America, Arco, Goldman Sachs, Chase Manhattan and Times Mirror Co., parent company of the L.A. Times.

“If you visit Santa Marta,” said Times Mirror Chairman Robert Erburu, who, along with his wife, Lois, received the ninth annual Life Spirit Award, “you very quickly see that an enormous amount is being done with very little. If you’re in business, you have to admire that.

“This hospital is a gem that has to be nurtured,” Erburu added. “I really don’t know what East Los Angeles would do without Santa Marta.”

Some of Santa Marta’s early nurturing came from former President Richard M. Nixon, whose death was announced midway through the evening by hospital president Sister Guadalupe Guarneros. In 1968, at the request of the late Cardinal James McIntyre, the President-elect was the featured guest at a fund-raiser generating a substantial amount of the $10 million needed to build the hospital.

Friday, however, the only presidents on hand were from corporations.

Among the 600 supporters in attendance were dinner co-chairs Robin and Peter Barker, Gretchen and George Gibbs Jr., Anne and Robert Wycoff, and Thomas Decker; plus Lawrence and Rebecca del Santo, Ed Zapanta, Betty Freeman, and dinner committee co-chairwomen Dorothy Shea and Patty Burschinger.

The dinner proceeded briskly with comments by Guarneros, the Rev. Donald Merrifield and Joseph Duffy and a performance by the Modernaires backed by the Ray Moshay Orchestra and then the award presentation.

“A lot of people haven’t heard of Santa Marta,” Lois Erburu said in her acceptance. “There’s a lot of secrets in this city. Special places with people doing wonderful things.”