The Crowd -- B.W. Cook
“If you’re here in five years, and I’m here in five years, I will pick
up the tab for a dinner in honor of your 100th birthday,” Hans Prager,
owner of the legendary Ritz Restaurant in Fashion Island, said to Scott
Hornsby.
Prager joined his wife, Charlene, a striking redhead with short spiked
hair, and some 50 dinner guests of Hornsby’s to celebrate 95 years of
life and times on the planet.
“I’m here to record that comment,” sounded out Charlene Prager
following her husband’s offer. “It will be the best money that we have
ever spent on a dinner.”
Hornsby, host of his own private dinner reception at the Ritz
Restaurant, stood up at the center table to address friends and family
members.
“I had a recent physical, and the doctor said there was absolutely
nothing wrong with me. They even took bone marrow samples. My friends, I
don’t know why I have lived this long, but I feel terrific, and I am so
blessed to have you all here tonight,” he said.
Hornsby, whose late wife Mary Lou Hopkins Hornsby passed away last
year at the age of 86, still goes to work every day at his company known
as the AAA Flag and Banner.
The host joked with his dinner companions, stating, “You know there
has been quite a demand for American flags recently. I’m proud to say
that I have sold out several times and that I have never raised the price
a penny.”
Hornsby’s admission is nothing less than a window into the character
of a man who has lived to see the world transform from candlepower to the
nuclear age. Born in St. Louis on Jan. 13, 1907, Hornsby came into the
world of a very poor Irish family. Football and baseball would take him
to George Washington University in St. Louis.
Eventually, he would play early pro football for the St. Louis
Gunners, and that would lead to a pro contract with the St. Louis
Cardinals. Scott recalls with a laugh that in the early days of pro
football, they didn’t pay the players enough per game for them to
survive.
He served in the Navy in World War II and then came to Los Angeles,
opening a used car lot near Hollywood and Vine in the late 1940s. Hornsby
founded AAA Flag and Banner in 1968 and hasn’t missed a day since.
Mary Roosevelt, a close friend and community leader, stood up at the
dinner to toast Hornsby’s 95th birthday and also to remember his late
wife Mary Lou, one of the respected social voices in Orange County for
nearly four decades.
Mary Lou Hopkins Hornsby was a feature editor and society writer for
the Los Angeles Times’ Orange County edition, reporting on the people and
the events in the community long before there was a Fashion Island, long
before there was a Ritz Restaurant and long before Newport Beach had an
international reputation.
“Mary Lou and Scott helped to shape the community into what it is
today,” said Roosevelt, toasting Hornsby’s health and well being.
Hornsby organized the 95th birthday affair and sent out silver
engraved invitations over the Christmas holidays with the caveat that no
gifts would be accepted. With help from his stepsons, Bob and Bill
Hopkins, and from his daughter, Daryl King, and granddaughter, Jennifer
Shinohara, the party was an elegant and warm occasion shared by local
movers and shakers, including Carol and Kent Wilken, Nancy and Donald
Wynn, Donna and Doug Bunce, Adrienne Brennan, Dori de Kruif, Dardie
Dunlap, Noddie and Bill Weltner, Sue and Dave Hook, and Betty Belden
Palmer. The always fashionable Mary Dell Barkouras came to town from
Thunderbird Country Club in Rancho Mirage for the affair. As a dinner of
fresh salmon and veal picatta, followed by individual chocolate souffles
and creme brulee, was served, champagne flutes were raised in honor of
the man who says, “The secret to a good life is to live in the moment and
make the best of what comes.”
Indeed, words we can all live by, at 95 or any age.
* THE CROWD appears Thursdays and Saturdays.
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