Colleagues Readying 31st Annual Sale

The prestigious and hard-working Colleagues are sorting and sizing, getting ready for their 31st annual Colleagues sale May 9 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. This week a group of them, including Onnalee Doheny, president Dorothy Clark, Marjorie Miller and Ann Petroni were at I. Magnin’s in Beverly Hills taking donated furs from storage.

The 60 members, plus Colleagues’ two support groups, Les Amies and C.H.I.P.S., are nearly ready for the sale and hoping to net more than $200,000, like last year. Petroni and Miller, co-chairmen, have a raft of donations--designer clothes (new and used), jewelry, china, silver, antiques and lots of furniture and bric-a-brac.

GOOD NEWS: The news will be all positive Wednesday, we hear, when the board of directors of the California Museum of Science and Industry and the board of trustees of the California Museum Foundation host their 30th annual Awards Banquet honoring the scientist and industrialist of the year. From Morgan Harris, we’re told the museum, $2.5 million in debt not so long ago, now has a surplus. Plaudits!

GOOD FORTUNE: Los Angeles Spinsters never fail at ingenuity. Invitations to their annual ball Saturday in the elegant Crystal Ballroom at the Biltmore arrived in the form of black patent leather Chinese take-out cartons with personalized fortune cookies. Ball chairman Patricia Anne MacLaren and her assistants, Helene Heglund and Letitia Quinn, will transform the setting to resemble a Chinese New Year. Festivities will begin in the Rendezvous Court and move along to the ballroom for dinner and dancing. Debbie Karrenbrock of Los Angeles Party Designs is giving the party a Far East touch. Gregg Elliott and his Orchestra will probably play all night.

TYLER PRIZES: The Tyler Prize, a $150,000 award, is widely recognized as the most prestigious environmental science prize in the world. To date, Alice C. Tyler, and her late husband, John C. Tyler (founder of Farmers Insurance Group), have contributed in excess of $2.8 million to support the prize. The winner of the 1987 prize for environmental achievement will be honored May 8 at a gala dinner at Chasen’s in Beverly Hills, according to Dr. Jerome B. Walker, prize director and associate provost at USC. Twenty Tyler laureates have been honored since the award’s inception. An 11-member committee selects winners.

BUSY TOWN: About 300 gathered at the Pacific Palisades home of Mary and Jim Hesburgh to honor his brother, Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, president of Notre Dame University for 35 years. Father Hesburgh will retire after the June graduation.

This week at the California Club, Austin H. Kiplinger of Washington, D.C., was the guest of honor at a dinner hosted by Nancy and Richard Call, Mary and Philip Hawley, and Walter and Darlene Gerken. Kiplinger was in town to call a little attention to historic Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home, and to provide clues on political trends. Nancy Call is a representative on the Mount Vernon board of directors.

RANKING DELEGATE: Mayor Tom Bradley will be the ranking American official invited to the 750th anniversary Jubilee Year celebrating the founding of the city of Berlin on Thursday. Berlin is Los Angeles’ Sister City. The delegation will include Councilman Robert Farrell, chairman of the Los Angeles City Council Sister City Committee. They’ll be accompanied by Andre Previn and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, playing two concerts as a gift from the people of Los Angeles. The mayor also will open the art exhibit, “Los Angeles Today: Contemporary Visions,” featuring works of 14 Los Angeles artists. The Los Angeles Central Library will send books. The Los Angeles Zoo will send the Berlin Zoo two fishers, animals native to America, and belonging to the same species as the European sable. In July, Los Angeles sends a Dixieland band, the Hot Frogs. James Miscoll is chairman of the Los Angeles Committee.

BASKET SUPPER: The weather’s nice, and the UCLA Art Council plans “A Sunday in the Park” next Sunday from 6 to 9 p.m. Mrs. Franklin D. Murphy is honorary chairman of the event in the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden. It’s informal attire for basket suppers.