Music Center Honors Top Donors : It Isn’t Always Easy for Contributors to Fund Those Gifts

Contrary to common belief, those huge sums given by major donors to charity aren’t always easily given.

For instance, at the Music Center reception Wednesday evening in The Founders, feting Gold Circle Patrons of the Arts (donations of $500,000 or more), Distinguished Patrons of the Arts (known as DPA’s--$250,000 or more) and Benefactors ($100,000 or more), Peggy Parker, who this year became a DPA, noted when asked how she was feeling, “I feel very poor.” She added, “But I feel very committed to the Music Center.”

Club 100 president Diane Morton told how she and her husband, Leon, arrived at their $100,000 gift: “When I began working for the Music Center, we pledged $5,000, and then we bought a ‘treewell’ (a gift of $20,000 for a tree at the Music Center), and then I told Leon, ‘If we’re ever going to give, we’ve got to give now, because the price (to become a Benefactor) is going up to $150,000 in July. And you’ve got to put your money where your mouth is.”

The Auerbachs

Holding hands, Lisa and Ernest Auerbach smiled for the photographer and seemed relaxed about their Gold Circle gift. Auerbach, a Southern California commercial developer, wanted only to discuss his wife: “Married 42 years--I’m ready to kiss her again. I’m giving a 70th birthday for her at the Regency Club on Saturday.”

Joseph J. Pinola, chairman of the Music Center Board of Governors and chairman and CEO, First Interstate Bancorp, was at the podium to introduce special guests Fred Nicholas, chairman of the Walt Disney Concert Hall Committee, and Daniel Dworsky, chairman of Dworsky Associates, who has recently been named executive architect to work in association with architect Frank O. Gehry to design the future home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Joe and Dorie Pinola are among the Music Center’s Benefactors.

Getting kudos from Esther Wachtell, the Music Center’s president, were Distinguished Patrons in attendance--Lila and Roy Ash, Sally and Robert Hunt, Hedy and Ted Orden, Esther and Abe M. Zarem, and Peggy Parker, attending with Walter Grauman. Distinguished Patrons James and Sally Thomas couldn’t come.

New Benefactors of recent months attending, in addition to the Pinolas and the Mortons, included Martin and Ann Albert, Denise and Jeffrey Berg, Alice and Joseph Coulombe, Betty Freeman, Louise and Herold Held, Keith and Bill Kieschnick, Eugene and Maxine Rosenfeld and Hope and Lee Warner. Also Benefactors, but not there, were Douglas S. Cramer, Warren and Alyce Williamson and Susan and David Wilstein.

Givers in Attendance

To welcome them all to the fold, big givers such as Dan Frost (honorary Music Center chairman and a Distinguished Patron of the Arts), Gerald and Virginia Oppenheimer and Annette and Peter O’Malley were in attendance.

Fred Nicholas, who also is chairman of the Museum of Contemporary Art (the Disney Hall will form a glass-roofed oasis to link the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the MOCA), paid special tribute to the Disney Foundation: “I have never met a more generous donor . . . . She (Lillian Disney, widow of Walt Disney) told me: ‘All I want is a building I can be proud of--that reflects Walt Disney--and that provides great music.’ She does not want her name on it.”