ROYALTY REUNITES, REFLECTS; ROSE QUEENS PAST, PRESENT DO BRUNCH.

Byline: Deborah Sullivan Daily News Staff Writer

At 89, garbed in royal red, Holly Halsted Balthis presided over a gathering of queens Tuesday.

``They call me the OLRQ. That stands for the oldest living rose queen,'' boasted the 1930 Tournament of Roses queen.

``For a while you try to hide it, then you get kind of proud.''

Halsted Balthis and 29 of her successors convened at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel for the 25th annual Kodak Rose Queens Brunch, a time for several generations of pageant winners to rendezvous and reminisce.

The event honors the lifelong members of what 1960 Rose Queen Margarethe Bertelson Knoblock called ``an elite sorority'' of pageant queens who together represent nearly seven decades of American history.

``You're not even queen for a day,'' said Halsted Balthis, who lives in Laguna Beach. ``You're queen for a lifetime.''

For rose queens, the yearlong whirlwind of public appearances doesn't end with the next coronation, but continues through decades of minor celebrity.

``It's instant recognition,'' Halsted Balthis said. ``I'm never introduced but that they say, `Oh, you know who she is?' ''

``As soon as anyone hears that I was a queen or that any of us is a queen, their eyes light up,'' said Bertelson Knoblock of Pasadena, who served as protocol chairwoman for the pageant for 14 years, grooming new queens to join the sorority.

``You're instant royalty,'' she said. ``It's really fun when you're in a grocery store and your hair's in curlers.''

So what lessons did Knoblock impart to the budding queens?

``I think being humble is one of the nicest things you can instill in somebody,'' she said.

That's a good thing, because despite the fanfare, rose queens must endure life's knocks and history's whims.

1942 Rose Queen Dorothy Brubach Chase presided over war bond sales instead of the tournament after the parade was canceled and the game moved to North Carolina in fear of Axis attacks during World War II.

Years after her 1953 reign, Leah Feland King found herself thrust unexpectedly into independence, relying on her rose queen skills to survive.

``Little did I know I would be married and divorced and have to start a career,'' said Feland King, now an events planner who lives in La Canada Flintridge. ``This experience gave me so many tools to do that.''

For 1968 queen Linda Strother McNight, the turmoil of the times overshadowed the glamour of the pageant.

``In 1968, the most important thing was dealing with social unrest and the war in Vietnam,'' said Strother McNight, now 48 and living in Los Angeles. ``So why would anyone do anything so shallow as be a rose queen?''

Campuses roiled in protest, while the NAACP picketed the pageant that year to denounce the lack of African-American queens or princesses. The upheaval left Strother McNight mired in mixed feelings about her role as beauty queen.

``This was one of those institutions from the past, so at a time when you're challenging every known institution it was very schizophrenic,'' she said.

Although she never let classmates at the University of California at Berkeley know she had reigned as rose queen, she now enjoys the reunions in the glow of hindsight.

For Halsted Balthis, a stint as rose queen served as a lens through which to view the century. For years the oldest living rose queen has spoken before Rotary clubs and other groups about her experience.

The title of her talk: ``This is my century, and I've lived every decade.''

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2 Photos

PHOTO (1) Rose queens from seven decades smile at the 25th annual Kodak Rose Queens Brunch at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel.

(2) Holly Halsted Balthis, rose queen of 1930, chats with Purdy Tran, queen for 1998.

Myung J. Chun/Daily News