IT ALL STARTED OVER 63 YEARS AGO WITH A GHOST STORY, TWO DYNAMIC ROLLING HILLS RESIDENTS NAMED BETTY, AND ONE WORLD-CLASS CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL IN LOS ANGELES
A CALL TO HELP
The Portuguese Bend National Horse Show
It was 1957 when Betty Learned received a call from the indomitable Mary Duque at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA), informing her that the hospital had provided thousands of dollars of free care to 50 critically-ill Palos Verdes children that year, and would Betty consider raising $1,000 to help build a recovery room in return? Never flummoxed by a good challenge, Betty called upon her friend Betty Davidson, and the two gathered ten more vibrant Peninsula women – and just like that, the Peninsula Committee Children’s Hospital (PCCH) was born. The women decided to throw a “ghost party” to raise the funds– a party “so ghostly you can’t be seen, (requiring) no costumes, driving, late hours, or hangovers. Just send in your donation, stay home and RELAX,” coaxed the spryly-stated invite. The ladies raised $4,500 for CHLA with that effort (an impressive $41,897 in today’s dollars), and it was lifelong horse lover Davidson’s idea, along with fellow member Oral Dryden, to undertake a horse show fundraiser for CHLA the following year at the Portuguese Bend Stables.
Not Horsing Around
“Many naysayers warned us, ‘You can’t make money with a horse show,’” recollects Davidson. “As far as we were concerned, that was like waving a red flag in front of a bull.” So PCCH did its homework and studied other national West Coast horse shows, astutely observing their expense due to their extensive labor costs. An easy fix for these clever ladies – they enlisted their husbands and kids to help, and the allvolunteer 1st Annual Portuguese Bend National Horse Show (PBNHS) now in its 62nd year – made its debut with a fundraising bang! Betty Davidson devised the group’s timeless seahorse logo in honor of “their little horse show by the sea” and thanks to personal connections with “one of the best trainers in America, Roy Register,”the first horse show “started at the top with other fine trainers who brought their premier horses to give immediate stature to our show,” credits Davidson.
