History

A LITTLE HISTORY OF THE TROPHY DINNER

Editor Betty Noonan

When I was working on the current Newsletter and inserting a story about Bruce Keller, it suddenly struck me that the tenor of you Board Members has gradually changed, and more than half of you are so young that you may never met or knew Roy Weatherby, much less knew how the Award dinners have changed through the years. So I asked Hy if I could take five or ten minutes to give you all a little history..

As most of you know, I started working for Roy in 1952 and retired in 1989 at age 65 – so I spent 37 years as his right hand and confidant, ending up as Ed’s Vice President of Sales for the last 5 or 6 years I was there. I really moved up in stature with the company through the years, but when it came time to get ready for the Awards dinner, my regular work almost came to a standstill so I could help him prepare for it.

The first four years were all Roy’s doing. Of course, the very first one was the surprise presentation to Herb Klein in his newly built home in Dallas – with a 1700 sq. ft. trophy room. This one was a stag affair, with only about twenty people there, but it was a precursor of things to come. General Nathan Twining, who was at that time Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Truman, made the presentation to Herb.

Also present were the three most prominent hunting editors of that time, Jack O’Connor, who wrote for Outdoor Life, Warren Page with Field & Stream, and Pete Brown from Sports Afield.

The second Awards Dinner was also a stag affair, held in Denver. All of the attendees were Roy’s guests, by invitation only. Jack O’Connor won the award that second year. And the third and fourth year Dinners were both held in Wahington, D.C, during the same time as the NRA Conventions. For both of these affairs, however, Roy finally included the spouses or girl friends of the attendees Warren Page was the third year recipient, and Roy took a little bit of heat since both Jack O’Connor and Warren Page were arms writers and some people looked upon them as professional hunters. But Roy took the stand that no matter who was footing the bill for them, they still collected the trophies and deserved to win.

For these first four years I have to tell you there was no such thing as a printed program –but they didn’t need one, since the only people involved on the podium were Roy,, the trophy winner and the presenter.

From the fifth dinner on, however, Roy kept the dinners on the west coast and he kept expanding his invitation list , while still footing the bill. As a matter of fact, it was about the fifth or sixth dinner that Roy added to the format. For each of these previous dinners, Roy and Camilla stood just inside the ballroom door until the last guest had arrived for the cocktail party. He decided that he and Camilla didn’t really get to see enough of their friends in one evening by spending most of the cocktail hour waiting for the last guest to arrive, so he expanded his invitation to three events, especially for his out of town guests. He suggested they arrive a day early and attend an informal cocktail party the night before the dinner, at the same hotel. He also invited anyone that didn’t leave too early the morning after the dinner to join him for breakfast. All as his guests. This arrangement lasted for about fifteen years before he retreated back to a “one night stand”.

Speaking of programs, when he first started having them printed, he insisted on including the names of all the guests, and of course, he wanted them as accurate as possible, so we kept feeding names to our printer right up to the day before the dinner. And I have to tell you, there was more than once we sweated out waiting for them to be delivered in time to be placed on the tables. This procedure only lasted about five years, however, before he was convinced to drop the idea.

All through the 60s and into the early 70s, computers were just being introduced and there was no such thing as printing the name tags in a professional manner. Nope – for over ten years this gal right here hand printed with a marker pen each and every name tag and then placed them inside those plastic holders, with a clip or a pin on the back! How things have changed in that regard! I was also the one that sat down with Roy to arrange the seating chart. Believe me he kept track of who couldn’t be seated with whom because of this or that, and he was very meticulous in assigning the people at each table, or even a nearby table, so there would be no friction or uneasiness on anyone’s part.

It’s almost uncanny now, comparing it to today’s dinners, but you should know that all of the preparations each year were handled by the two of us. We would go up to the hotel to pick out the tablecloths, arrange for the menu, and especially to work with the hotel on the placement of the mounted animals that were to be brought in for the atmosphere he wanted in the ballroom. A good many of them were Roy’s mounts that normally were displayed in his retail store, but in addition he had many good friends, like C.J. McElroy and others in the Los Angeles or Las Vegas area who seemed pleased to loan him some gorgeous mounts.

Elgin Gates was the fifth and the youngest winner of the Award. He won it in 1960, when he was only 38 years old. Unfortunately, he was also one who may have died the youngest, at age 66.

At the 7th Dinner in 1962 Roy added another dimension to the evening – a little bit of humor. He had a good friend named Ken Niles, who at that time was a well known emcee and/or radio announcer who agreed to become Roy’s emcee. (On the 1962 program he was listed as “Master Orator”, but starting the next year he was henceforth called the “Master Emcee”). By today’s standards he would not have been known as a stand-up comedian, but he did have a great sense of humor, and he did his homework well beforehand on the backgrounds of both the presenter and the winner, so that many of his witticisms were directed toward and about them. He was not at all crude – just a little “corny” at times. But Roy’s guests enjoyed him thoroughly.

By this time the assemblage at the head table had grown to anywhere from 15 to 20 people – comprised of members of his Selection Committee and their wives, the presenter and sometimes his wife, the winner and his wife, Roy & Camilla and Ken Niles. After Roy welcomed his guests with a brief message he would introduce Ken Niles, who then introduced everyone seated at the head table before he went into his spiel.

This arrangement with Ken Niles lasted through 1990, twenty- eight years! When Ken retired Roy located another emcee by the name of Guy Owen, who was also pretty humorous, and he carried on Ken’s work until Andy Oldfield and Thornton Snider took over the presentations.

We had several little incidents at some of the dinners that Roy didn’t have anything to do with. In 1962, the year Prince Pahlavi of Iran won the trophy and Roy & Camilla, Marty and I and Roy’s secretary were all staying in the Presidential Suite of the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where President John Kennedy had stayed just a few days prior. This was a huge, beautiful suite with three spacious bedrooms, a combination dining and living room, and a foyer leading into it from the hall. Each bedroom had complete bathroom facilities, and there was also a toilet and washbowl in the foyer. The five of us were all ready to check out and were waiting for the bellman to come up and get our luggage. Now Roy’s secretary, Rosemary, was a normal, well mannered gal probably in her early forties, and she came up to us as everyone was waiting, all aflutter and said, “Well I just finished sitting on every toilet in this suite so that I could truthfully say I have sat on the same John as President Kennedy! “

In 1972 at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, before the Award ceremony began the program was interrupted when one of the former winners caught Roy by surprise to present him with a beautiful, large silver punch bowl, engraved with the names of former winners, as a tribute to all he had done for the hunting world. He was quite flabbergasted, but very pleased and of course said that he would treasure that the rest of his life.

I don’t know if any of you have ever lived in the Los Angeles area, but if you have, then you know that Orange County is noted for most of its inhabitants being very liberal minded. In 1989 Roy had selected the Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach as the site of that year’s Award dinner. Shortly after the cocktail hour, when all the guests were seated awaiting dinner to be served, a group of four or five local men “crashed the party” and rushed into the ballroom shouting about the women and their fur coats, and the men killing helpless animals, etc.. and just generally disrupting the scene. It didn’t last long, as the hotel security guards quickly escorted them out of the ballroom. But it was certainly a conversation piece for the rest of the evening.

It was in the late 70s and the early 80s that Roy’s Board of Directors started badgering him to stop footing the bill for these dinners, and telling him the only logical thing to do was to start charging everyone for attending. It took them about three years to convince him, but when he finally did he was surprised to find that the number attending did not diminish.

I must also tell you that there were no silent or live auctions while Roy was alive – probably because he never thought of it. Andy Oldfield and Thornton Snider and their rekindled board members introduced them, with instant success. In the early days, we had about 75 to 100 attendees that finally grew to over 200 before the reins were turned over to Andy’s group, and most of you have seen the success the Foundation has enjoyed since then.

One last note. By the fall of 1987 Roy’s health had deteriorated tremendously and for the first time since 1975 when the dinner was not held because of his first bypass surgery, Roy could not attend. Dr. Jim Conklin won the award that year and I can’t remember whether it was him or Ed who suggested before the ceremonies ended that anyone who wished should come up to the podium to speak before a camera with a video message to Roy. This was a wonderful, special tribute to him and the next day Ed and I took the tape out to Roy’s house and viewed it with him. Needless to say, he was very moved by everyone’s thoughtfulness.

I did a little recap the other day, and out of 54 winners, including Tony Gioffre, this year’s winner, 22 of them are no longer with us – and I feel very privileged to have known almost every one of them.

For those of you who were not around through these years, I hope that learning how this evolved has been of interest to you.