Honoring Huntington Beach’s standout citizens

A 10-year-old girl who taught piano to children throughout her Minnesota town and grew up to found a Huntington Beach private school. Three generations of Huntington Beach businessmen who brought luxury hotels downtown. The late founder of a company whose flags decorated seven Olympic Games and five Worlds’ Fairs.

Those were some of the recipients of the Huntington Beach Chamber of Commerce’s annual Legacy Awards, Athena Award and Outstanding Citizen Award this week. The city’s business community, public officials and other prominent residents gathered at Seacliff Country Club to honor some of the city’s most notable figures.

“I have goosebumps at some of the people we have here today to give awards to,” Chamber Chairman Mike Grumet said.

One such recipient was Carol Van Asten, owner and director of Carden Academy of Huntington Beach; she won the Athena Award, given to outstanding professional women. Van Asten went from being a precocious 10-year-old piano teacher in rural Borup, Minn., to spending 15 years as a public school teacher, former winner Barbara Delgleize said.

Frustrated by large class sizes, Van Asten took over Carden Academy, started teaching reading in preschool and moved it to Huntington Beach, she added.

“What a privilege it is to live and work in Huntington Beach,” Van Asten said. “I love it out here. Thanks to everyone who worked so hard with me these 30 years.”

The Chamber gave a memorial Legacy Award to the late Leon van der Wyk, who founded Pageantry World in 1979 with his wife, Cindy. The company has sold custom flags to theme parks throughout the world, as well as decorating numerous Olympic Games and World’s Fairs, Grumet said.

Cindy van der Wyk took the award on behalf of her deceased husband, saying the Olympics even brought the couple together in the first place — they met at the 1960 winter games in Squaw Valley. She said Leon had a “passion for pageantry” and hoped he had made people’s lives a little more colorful, she said.

Leon van der Wyk’s idea of success was like an old poem her great grandmother had written down, Cindy said. The final lines read: “I can live my life and be/ contented to the end/If but a few shall know my works/And proudly call me friend.”

Other Legacy Award winners included: Robert Mayer Sr., Jr. and III of the Robert Mayer Corporation, which brought both the Hyatt Regency Resort and Spa and the Hilton Waterfront Beach Resort to downtown Huntington Beach; Natalie and Dana Carlson of Century Publishing, a family business that has won dozens of national awards for the directories it publishes.

The Outstanding Citizen Award went to Nouha Hreish, who has been president of the American Business Women’s Assn., Soroptimist International of Westminster and Huntington Beach, and the Kiwanis Club of Huntington Beach, and has been honored by numerous charity groups ranging from the YMCA to the American Red Cross.

MICHAEL ALEXANDER may be reached at (714) 966-4618 or at michael.alexander@latimes.com.