Doing Lunch--and Celebrating the Power of Women and Friendship

Marty Hammer, the first woman to serve as president of the 17-member Independent Colleges of Southern California consortium, calls the circle of women she’s put together her Power Chicks.

Comprising professionals who are the first women to occupy leadership posts previously held by men, this informal cadre staged its latest power lunch, which included a dozen guys (girls will be girls) in the ultra-feminine French Room of the California Club on Thursday.

Many of the women have come to Los Angeles, settled into mahogany row, serve on male-dominated boards, but don’t have much time to make women friends.

And Hammer, who went to work for the college group three years ago after “lawyering” for 25 years, knows how lonely a woman can be at the top. “L.A. is a hard place to get to know,” she said. “I loathe the word ‘networking’ so I call the group ‘the first-and-onlys.’ My husband, Steve, coined ‘Power Chicks,’ and it stuck.”

“I started it with college presidents such as Nancy Bekavac of Scripps, Jacqueline Doud of Mount St. Mary’s, Carolyn Denham of Pacific Oaks, and it just grew,” she said.

The powwow, co-hosted by Kathy Schloessman, president of the Los Angeles Sports & Entertainment Commission, was in honor of Val B. Ackerman, president of the Women’s National Basketball Assn., which was launched in 1997 following the U.S. team’s gold medal performance at the summer Olympics in Atlanta.

Ackerman is a woman with a mission--spreading the gospel of women’s basketball, which now has 16 teams in the WNBA, including the L.A. Sparks. “We want to be the fifth national league, and we can do it,” she said. How does she know? “We drew 2 million fans in our third season. The NBA did that in its 20th season.”

So how come the NBA isn’t called the MNBA?

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Forget the Fortune 500, the flawless family tree or a Phi Beta Kappa key. If you aspire to political office or the right connections in San Marino, “Grad Night committee” is an essential on your resume. (Instead of sending grads to Disneyland as so many high schools do, the committee stages an annual party at San Marino High School.)

Several Southern California high schools stage elaborate on-campus celebrations, but San Marino’s is probably the granddaddy of them all. The tradition, a social sacred cow in this affluent suburb, had its beginning in 1955 when a drunk driver killed four students en route home from a prom. The following year, parents and community leaders created their own “theme park” on the school grounds, which requires the kind of planning and number of volunteer that goes into a Tournament of Roses float.

“I had 95 on my committee,” said this year’s chairwoman Tia Spencer as she welcomed guests to the elegant Loyal Workers “thank you” party held at Glabman’s furniture store in Pasadena on Saturday night.

Former Grad Night chairwoman Pat Connell and mother of six grads, has been painting scenery for 25 years. Barbara Damerel, who co-chaired, said, “It’s a life-changing experience for some of the kids--their last night as a class. Only class members can attend, and they cannot leave until 5 a.m. unless called for by a parent. A lot of them talk to classmates they never spoke to in school. Others have been together since kindergarten. It’s a real rite of passage for them.”

While grazing on caterer Peggy Dark’s buffet and checking out raffle prizes arrayed on a stack of Glabman’s pricey Oriental rugs, volunteer Dana Marevich sighed and said, “I can’t wait until next year.”

Patt Diroll’s column is published Tuesdays. She can be reached at [email protected].