FROM THE NEWSROOM:First-class citizen

Last Friday at lunchtime, I was sitting in a room full of dignitaries at the Balboa Bay Club. Well, dignitaries in the Newport Beach sense.

They all had one thing in common. They were all past Citizens of the Year.

Former Hoag Hospital chief executive Michael Stephens was there, as was library matriarch and former Councilwoman Lucille Kuehn. City Manager Bob Shelton, fishing magnate Art Gronsky, realtor and activist Dayna Pettit, Ford dealer Bob Robins, Malarkey’s owner Bill Hamilton, former mayor and Councilman Dennis O’Neil, and ferry owner Seymour Beek were all in attendance as were several more.

They were all awaiting their guest of honor — Evelyn Hart, the newest Citizen of the Year.

Hart, who served on the Newport Beach City Council as a councilwoman and mayor in the 1980s and 1990s, was escorted to the luncheon by political legend Marian Bergeson under the ruse that the pair were going to the Bay Club to meet former state Sen. Lynne Daucher.

As they wandered into the room filled with the past citizens of the year, Hart clearly looked confused.

“I really thought Marian had the wrong room and was just saying hello to someone she knew,” Hart said. “Well, well what do you know? Life is full of little surprises.”

An honor designated by the Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce, the Citizen of the Year is chosen by all the existing Citizens of the Year through an intense balloting process.

Well, maybe not that intense.

“It was just time,” Stephens said of choosing Hart.

It certainly was a good pick in my book. I will always be grateful to Hart for all she did to help a young reporter back in the early 1990s who was just getting his sea legs.

I had a tough assignment back then. Covering Newport Beach during a rough-and-tumble era when the budgets were being axed and the then-police chief was being sued for sexual harassment.

Hart took pity on me and would meet me fairly regularly for breakfast at the now-defunct Coco’s restaurant on 17th Street to fill me in on background and story ideas.

We’ve had a fond friendship ever since.

“Where are the pictures of the babies?” she asked as she always does, when she finally saw me, the lone noncitizen of the year in the room. I had to tell her that my babies aren’t babies anymore. And, as usual, I didn’t have any pictures.

My, how time flies — and in my mind it flew too long before Hart got this award. But better late than never.

And her impressive resume backs it up.

In addition to the City Council tenure, she served as president of the League of Cities, as a commissioner to the Airport Land Use Local Agency Formation commissions. She was on the state Board of Behavioral Sciences and served a term on the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Board. She lends a volunteer hand to Youth Employment Services, the Someone Cares Soup Kitchen, Airfair, the Hoag Auxiliary the OASIS Senior Center and several non-profits.

“You know, Tony, I find it hard to believe I am being honored this way, but I am getting used to it,” she said. “I think I like it. I want you to know that I am so jazzed that the Newport Harbor Chamber of Commerce former Citizens of the Year have named me to join them.”

She noted that former Mayor Don Webb dubbed last year as the Year of the Centennial. But she has a different idea for her tenure.

“I would like this to be named Year of the Granny,” she said, referring to her volunteering as co-chair with Dr. Gwyn Parry from Hoag Hospital to rebuild the Oasis Senior Center.

She has a fundraising drive in full force, so have your checkbook ready to go if you run into her.

Hart, who moved to Newport Beach in 1951, is 76 now and has been married to her husband, John, for 47 years. They ran a local retail sporting goods store until 1979 and have four grown children and eight grandchildren.

After all these years, she continues to be a proud emissary of her beloved city of Newport Beach.

“No matter where in the world I have traveled, I would not want to live anywhere else.”