L.A. Olympic leader finds a new purpose

As a young man in search of his purpose in life, Barry Sanders envisioned leaving his mark in bricks and mortar.

“It seemed to me that architecture was the answer because you would sort of build your own tombstone. They’d remember you existed,” he said. “You had an effect on this earth because you’d been able to make something that would last beyond you.”

He changed his mind during college, while he worked for two venerable Philadelphia architects. In glancing through their files he was startled to realize that half the buildings they’d built had been destroyed within their lifetime.

Buildings crumble, he realized, but ideas endure.

Forty years later, as an accomplished international business lawyer, civic leader and chairman of the Southern California Committee for the Olympic Games, Sanders returned to that point while urging the U.S. Olympic Committee to back Los Angeles as the site of the 2016 Summer Games.

Sanders told his audience that the Olympics survive because they celebrate the best of humanity, not because they spawn massive stadiums and arenas. Los Angeles paid homage to the ancient ideals in 1984 and revived the Olympic movement aesthetically and financially. Given another chance, Los Angeles will stir mind, body and soul to captivate a generation that considers the Olympics so last century.

“I think the bid is important because we’re saying to them that buildings come and go but the principles, the philosophy -- that lasts and grows, at least if you do it right,” Sanders said.

“I think that’s the thing. The Olympics are worth doing. The Olympics aren’t just about who wins this sport.”

If scores and times were paramount, Sanders would not have been the choice to lead this effort to a watershed moment Saturday in Washington, where a panel will choose between finalists Los Angeles and Chicago. The winner will vie with Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro and other international cities for a final nod in 2009.

Los Angeles didn’t make it this far because Sanders is an obsessive sports fan. He’s not. But his legal work has linked him to the Goodwill Games, World Cup, America’s Cup, the 1984 Olympics, the Salt Lake City Olympic Organizing Committee and the Dodgers, the latter through former owner Peter O’Malley.

Sanders has season seats for the L.A. Philharmonic, Mark Taper Forum and Geffen Theater, not the Lakers. He hasn’t run a booster club, but he chaired the boards of the Philharmonic, Public Library Foundation and local American Jewish Committee chapter and advised many other cultural groups.

Los Angeles certainly didn’t get this far because Sanders is brash or larger than life, like a certain actor-turned-governor.

Sanders is 61, compact and trim. He grows orchids. He’s proud to say he has had one job since 1969, with the law firm Latham & Watkins, the same car since 1970 and “the same kids, same wife and same house we moved into in 1974” in Beverly Hills.

Bow ties are his trademark, but he began wearing them only about a dozen years ago. He can’t recall why. Combined with his modest stature and mild blue eyes, they give him the air of Central Casting’s idea of a high school science teacher who taught your parents and suspects you’ll cut his class too.

In this case, appearances are hugely deceiving. Sanders is sharp and perceptive, at home negotiating multibillion-dollar deals in Asia or lecturing at UCLA about his enduring passion for architecture. He’s as comfortable with former Yale classmates who became corporate executives as with people he befriended while co-chairing Rebuild L.A. after the 1992 riots. He has brought them all into the Olympic effort.

It’s an effort that needed organizational skills, vision, and a means to reach into every corner of a diverse city. It didn’t need flash and dash.

It needed Sanders, who retired from partnership at Latham & Watkins and gave up his architecture class this semester to oversee the final details. With equal ease he wrangled support from the entertainment industry and financial guarantees from the city and state, giving the USOC all the style and substance it could want.

“He sees connections between different spheres that other people wouldn’t necessarily see,” said David Simon, president of the Southern California Olympic committee. “Everybody recognizes Barry as a very intelligent man. He’s also an astute observer of people in different situations. He’s motivated and driven without being temperamental.”

That was apparent to John C. Argue, Sanders’ predecessor. Argue, founding chairman of the 1984 L.A. Olympic Organizing Committee and a titan in the community, was dying of leukemia in summer 2002 when he told Simon that Sanders would do well standing in for him. Simon agreed.

“I would not have guessed Barry would devote as much time to this process, or that he would need to,” Simon said.

Sanders cherishes the handwritten note in which Argue asked him to assume this Olympian task.

“He always said it’s amazing what you can get done if you don’t care who gets the credit,” Sanders said, “and I aspire to that kind of philosophy someday.”

On Saturday, we’ll know how much he got done.

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Helene Elliott can be reached at helene.elliott@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Elliott, go to latimes.com/elliott.