A Giving Person : Philharmonic Society Pushes Reclusive Gillespie Center Stage With Golden Baton Award

Reclusive philanthropist William J. Gillespie braved the spotlight last week to receive his first major public salute--the Golden Baton Award from the Philharmonic Society of Orange County.

“I kept trying to get somebody to stand in for me,” Gillespie of Laguna Beach jokingly said during the reception at the black-tie gala for about 300 guests at the Sutton Place Hotel in Newport Beach.

“But you can’t hide all your life. There are certain things you say ‘yes’ to. The dust will settle after this, and I can go off just being Bill.”

Last June, Gillespie, heir of a founding investor in the Farmers Insurance Group, announced through a spokesman that he was giving $2.8 million to the Performing Arts Center, $1.2 million to the Pacific Symphony, $1 million to Pacific Chorale, $940,000 to South Coast Repertory and $680,000 to the Philharmonic Society. Also, UC Irvine’s College of Medicine received $5 million.

“This is what is known as a slam-dunk--it was absolutely obvious who would receive this award,” said Dean Corey, executive director of the Philharmonic Society. Past recipients have included Henry T. Segerstrom, Donald L. Bren and UCI founding chancellor Daniel G. Aldrich Jr.

When Philharmonic President Fritz Westerhout gave Gillespie the steel sculpture of a hand poised with a golden baton, the philanthropist smiled gamely as photographers snapped their picture.

But when Westerhout stepped aside, Gillespie shouted, “Don’t leave me!”

And then, smiling at the crowd who had risen to their feet, he said: “You can all sit down now.”

Enough said.

Later, seated in the ballroom, Gillespie called the award “absolutely beautiful.”

Before the event got underway, Gillespie talked privately about his grandfather-- William Cheney--a founding investor in Farmers Insurance Group, which was acquired in 1988 by a London-based company in a $5.2-billion buyout.

In the early 1900s, “my grandfather came out here from Texas, my grandmother from Iowa,” said Gillespie, who wore a diamond-paved star on his tuxedo jacket. “They met at a football game.

“My grandfather didn’t have a pot to spit in at the time--he was a bean farmer, farmed lima beans in the Irvine Ranch area where the university is today.”

His grandmother, Eva Cheney, cooked for the Irvine Ranch hands.

“She used to tell me she’d get up early to make pots of coffee, biscuits, gravy, pancakes, eggs, sides of bacon,” he said.

Cheney also invested in orange orchards. “One of his friends happened to be John Tyler, co-founder of Farmers Insurance Group. John came to my grandfather, told him to sell everything he had and invest in his company . . . it would make him a millionaire.

“My grandfather did exactly that . . . and it ultimately made him a million. He was the first Orange County district manager for Farmers.”

Gillespie’s love for the arts began in a private L.A. boarding school, where his eighth-grade roommate taught him about classical music.

“I didn’t know Bach from beans,” he said, laughing. “We would sometimes go to Wallich’s Music City on weekends, buy 45s by Grieg and Chopin.

“He’d say, ‘Bill, this is what you should start with.’ He also taught me about opera, symphony, ballet.”

Last month, Henry Segerstrom presented Gillespie with an award during a private ceremony in the Center Room at the Performing Arts Center. “The center wanted to do a big group thing at William Lyon’s home [in Coto de Caza], but I said, ‘Can we make it smaller?’

“It was a nice little group, and Henry presented me with a beautiful crystal piece following a performance at the center.”

When he isn’t attending arts performances, visiting with arts directors or dropping in on the three battered women’s shelters he also supports, you might find Gillespie catching a flick--”I see one movie a week,” he said--or dining on tandoori chicken at Mayur in Corona del Mar.

He also loves to travel.

“I did an around-the-world trip on the Concorde two years ago,” he said. “And it set a speed record.”

Perhaps Dean Corey summed up Gillespie’s philanthropic style best: “He gives because he cares. He’s a very quiet gentleman. You would not know he is in a room. There is an aura about Gillespie that is very subtle.”

And his sense of privacy is well-developed.

How do you get a mega-philanthropist on the phone? You don’t. There’s no answering machine on Gillespie’s phone, Corey noted. “He gets so many calls the machine would load up in a minute.

“I fax him, then he calls me right back. I have a fax number, which I will not divulge.”