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.