Looking Back -- A man with presence

Young Chang

NEWPORT BEACH -- When Dick Richard died in the late 1970s, the crowd that showed up for the funeral included more than just family and

friends. The Commodore Club attended in uniform, Newport Beach Chamber of

Commerce members attended and so did former President Richard Nixon,

which explained all the Newport Beach Police cars in front of the Newport

Harbor Lutheran Church.

Jim de Boom, a former Newport-Mesa Unified School District trustee and

Community & Clubs columnist for the Pilot, remembers it well.

“Nixon counted Richard as one of his friends, in good times and bad

times,” de Boom said.

That’s the kind of presence Richard had in Newport Beach.

He is remembered most in three ways: as the owner of Richard’s Lido

Market, a business which is said to have helped form Lido Isle; as the

founder of the Goofoffers Club; and as the reason behind the Dick

Richard’s Breakfast Club.

He was one of the city’s earliest merchants and Chamber of Commerce

members, one of the pioneering business leaders who helped the city

prosper.

“He has a group still going. The group still meets in his honor -- the

Dick Richard’s Breakfast Club,” de Boom said.

We’ll start with his market, which Richard opened in 1948. It was

considered atypically luxurious for the Newport Beach area.

“It was elegant for a market,” said Gay Wassall-Kelly, whose family

would buy meat there and take it all the way back to the San Fernando

Valley. “They had unusual products in there, whether it was imported or

not.”

Wassall-Kelly remembers she bought her first can of capers at the

market. Goods like that were rare in Newport Beach because some still

considered it a vacation spot instead of an year-round residential city.

“But he brought a little class into his grocery store,” she said.

James Felton’s history of the city -- “Newport Beach, The First

Century, 1888-1988” -- says Richard’s Lido Market grossed $1 million in

its first year.

Wassall-Kelly’s father used to visit the store to chat with the

Goofoffers, a group founded by Richard.

Their regular meeting spot was the Cannery Restaurant, where they’d

have executive meetings and “talk about everything and nothing,”

Wassall-Kelly said. Topics included politics and jokes were frequent. The

group also put out the Goofoffers Gazette.

Members included John Wayne, Richard Nixon and other such locals as

the late Costa Mesa drugstore owner Al Pinkley. Everyone drank from

coffee mugs that bore not only their names, but caricatures of

themselves, de Boom said.

Finally, the Dick Richard’s Breakfast Club invited speakers to talk

about subjects that mattered to the community.

“He was loved, I think, by everyone who knew him,” de Boom said. “He

was a magnet who attracted people.”

* Do you know of a person, place or event that deserves a historical

Look Back? Let us know. Contact Young Chang by fax at (949) 646-4170;

e-mail at o7 [email protected] ; or mail her at c/o Daily

Pilot, 330 W. Bay St., Costa Mesa, CA 92627.