An Emotional High

The evening was full of emotional moments last week at the Bob Chandler Foundation fund-raiser at the Ritz-Carlton, Huntington. The late football hero’s daughter, Marisa, a freshman at Harvard University, flew in to sing “Memories.” That brought tears to Chandler’s wife, Marilyn, and his parents, Gene and Barbara Chandler of Whittier.

Chandler was 45 when he died a year ago, consumed by cancer in less than four months. He was most valuable player in the Rose Bowl in 1970 for USC against Michigan. He played with the Oakland Raiders and the Buffalo Bills, and from 1975-’78 was the leading pass receiver in the National Football League. He was a wide receiver for Oakland when the Raiders won the Super Bowl in 1981.

But, said Pat Haden, “He was more than a football legend--he was a great friend, a wonderful father and a great husband.”

Marilyn Chandler (a former USC song girl) chose Patti Smith, who also lost a son, Cameron, to cancer, to be chairwoman of the evening. The live auction raised nearly $80,000 for the foundation, but the amazing moments came when the auctioneer, Howard Covert, asked the audience of 300 to raise their auction paddles if they’d contribute $500 to sending children with cancer to the Ronald McDonald Camp for Good Times at Idyllwild. Forty-two in the audience cooperated. That will enable 42 children to enjoy a week in the mountains.

The foundation, which last summer raised $55,000 from a golf tournament, is also committed to an athletic scholarship at USC, currently held by Trojan junior safety Sammy Knight.

In the audience were longtime friends Diane and Pat Dixon, John Gooding (a friend since second grade), Bob Chandler’s Whittier coach Vic Lopez, former Oakland and Los Angeles Raider Howie Long, Tony Green from the Buffalo Bills and Chandler’s Buffalo Bills roommate, former quarterback Leo Hart. Marilyn’s Kappa Kappa Gamma friends came in droves.

Best to Come: Andrea L. Rich, new president and CEO of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, ticked off her five-to-seven-year plan for the museum last week for Costume Council members at the museum. “I would like to see this museum so beloved by the city that if anyone tried to lay a hand on it, there would be an outcry from the community,” she said.

Her long-term goal is to make the museum one of the best in the world. Her more immediate goal is the search for a museum director “who will lay the framework for artistic vision. I hope to be able to make a determination in a matter of two to three months.”

Rich also said she wants to rid the museum of bureaucracy and establish a K-12 arts education initiative that will involve the city’s museums, universities and foundations. She hopes to draw the art institutions together, so that visitors will think of Los Angeles as a magnificent drawing card.

And, she noted, “The future is going to have to be one that is viewed as less dependent on government. We need to support ourselves. And we have to be as creative as we can be to figure out how to generate revenues.”

With the museum’s acquisition of the next-door May Co. property, it now has a campus of eight acres bound by Fairfax, Curson, 6th and Wilshire. Rich envisions a secured art park and an outdoor pavilion with tunnels and bridges connecting the properties. By November, she said, the area will be spruced up with paint and landscaping to avoid the current blighted look.

Council members then descended to the atrium for the tea planned by Barbara Poer. Recently the Fashion Circle of the council honored Rich at a dinner and dance at the Four Seasons planned by Barbara Namerow, Fashion Circle chairwoman, and Eva Elkins, Costume Council chairwoman.

Bright as Day: Robert A. Day has been named chairman and president of the W.M. Keck Foundation, one of the nation’s largest private foundations. The board of trustees voted the appointment unanimously. Day is the grandson of the late W.M. Keck, founder and chief executive officer of the TCW Group of Cos., headquartered in Los Angeles, and including Trust Co. of the West and other affiliates currently managing more than $50 billion in assets.

Day will succeed Howard B. Keck, who has expressed his desire to retire from the management of the foundation. He is the only surviving son of W.M. Keck, a pioneer in America’s oil and gas industry and founder of the Superior Oil Co. He has led the foundation as chairman for 30 years as the combined assets of the foundation and the W.M. Keck Trust have grown to more than $1 billion. Among the foundation’s most notable grants is the W.M. Keck Observatory.

Since its inception, the foundation has distributed in excess of $500 million to charity. It primarily supports excellence in science, engineering, medical research and liberal arts.

Day also serves as chairman of the board of trustees of Claremont McKenna College and vice chairman for the YMCA for Greater Los Angeles.

Elsewhere on the Social Circuit

* At their premiere party next Sunday evening at the Beverly Hills Hotel, co-chairwomen Julie Lee and Sandy Murphy will announce the Las Floristas Floral Headdress Ball on April 19. Carolyn Stockwell is president and anticipates a net of more than $300,000 to benefit Las Floristas Handicapped Children’s Clinics at Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center.

* The Los Angeles World Affairs Council hosted its annual meeting this week, following luncheon.

* Proceeds from the golf clinic for women at the San Gabriel Country Club on Feb. 12 will benefit breast cancer research at Norris Cancer Center. Co-chairwomen are Julie Lynd and Lorna Reed, founder of Norris Auxiliary and its president for the first three years. Participants will give $200 each.

* Shelton g. Stanfill, currently president of the Music Center but named new president of the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta (he’ll also be involved in cultural programs associated with the 1996 Olympics), spoke last week to the Founders Circle of the Thousand Oaks Center for the Performing Arts . . . The California Arboretum Foundation’s Jameson Lecture Series is underway. Eric Haskell spoke last week on “French Influences on the American Landscape.” James Yoch speaks on “Italian Villas in American Scenes” at 2 p.m. Feb. 25 (with a sherry tea afterward), and Bruce Coats addresses “Moss or Gravel? Japanese Gardens in America” at 2 p.m. March 17.

* The James B. Pendleton Trust has established an endowed fund of $250,000 for financial support to students at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.

* Mary Lou Loper’s column is published Sundays.