A feast fit for a governor: Former California leaders share Thanksgiving favorites

On June 2, 1998, two significant things happened in Gray Davis’ life.

He received enough votes in a primary election to become the Democratic nominee for governor of California and put him on-track to be elected that November. And shortly after Davis and his wife Sharon Davis voted near their West Hollywood condo, they met two nuns with whom they would spend 21 Thanksgivings.

The nuns were Sisters Adrian Marie Conrad and Thomas Jeanne Doriot, members of the Indiana-based Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods who were living and working in Los Angeles at the time to serve their order. The Davises, who are Catholic, met the nuns at a noon mass that they had attended about 90 minutes after voting in the primary.

The nuns told Gray Davis as he was leaving the mass that they had just voted for him, he said during a roughly 45-minute phone interview that he and his wife gave Monday to The Sacramento Bee. Davis added that when he met the nuns, he told them Dan Lungren, who is also Catholic, was likely his opponent in the general election. The nuns replied Lungren was too conservative for their tastes and that they were for Davis.

This began a cherished friendship and perhaps the greatest long-running Thanksgiving dinner party in California political history.

Holidays for governors

Maybe every California governor has their holiday. For Arnold Schwarzenegger, who succeeded Davis, that holiday was Halloween.

Daniel Zingale served as chief of staff for Davis, subsequently had the same job for California First Lady Maria Shriver and was a senior adviser to Shriver’s then-husband Schwarzenegger. Zingale said that when it came to Halloween, Schwarzenegger – who didn’t immediately respond to an interview request emailed Monday to his website – brought in costumes, props and things from Hollywood where he’d been a film star.

“It was like something the governor’s office for Sacramento had never seen before,” Zingale said. “He transformed the governor’s office into a haunted mansion, essentially.”

Other governors were more low-key in their holiday celebrations. Jerry Brown was 20 when his father Pat Brown was elected governor in 1958. Then, governors and their families lived in the historic California Governor’s Mansion at 16th and H streets in downtown Sacramento. And that was where the Brown family would have Thanksgiving.

“We were at the mansion,” said Jerry Brown, who served four terms as governor and is now 86, during a phone interview last Friday. “We had a wonderful cook. I can remember when we took the turkey out of the oven, my father was there watching and I think The Bee or AP or somebody would… take a picture. So I always remember that.”

After Ronald Reagan was elected governor in 1966, his wife Nancy Reagan refused to live in the governor’s mansion, purportedly deeming it a firetrap. Holiday tradition at the mansion went by the wayside, too.

Brown was elected governor in 1974, famously living in a $250-a-month apartment in Sacramento, sleeping on a mattress on the floor and dating singer Linda Ronstadt. But that didn’t mean he brought people to his apartment for Thanksgiving. Instead, he said, he would spend that holiday in San Francisco or Los Angeles, where he had family.

Schwarzenegger celebrated Thanksgiving similarly. Zingale said he commuted from Brentwood while he was governor and would spend the holiday there with his family.

Only after Brown returned to office in the 2010s and resumed living in the governor’s mansion did he start hosting Thanksgivings for family in the historic house. Two of the years, Brown’s sister Kathleen Brown and his wife Anne Gust Brown had a competition on who could cook the best banana cake as judged by the then-governor, using an old family recipe. Kathleen Brown said she won the first year.

“Hers was too dry, that was the problem and she also changed the frosting,” Kathleen Brown said.

Since then, current Gov. Gavin Newsom and First Lady Jennifer Siebel Newsom have hosted “some lovely gatherings at the old governor’s mansion,” said Zingale, who served as an adviser to the governor before retiring.

It is unclear if the Newsoms have hosted Thanksgiving at the mansion, with the family only living there a short time and it being used since for official events. Zingale remembered the Newsoms hosting a Christmas gathering at the mansion and when they decorated it with Jack-o-lanterns for Halloween.

Gov. Newsom wasn’t immediately available for comment. Spokesperson Izzy Gardon said via email that Newsom “will be spending Thanksgiving with his family.”

California’s other living former governor, 91-year-old Pete Wilson, didn’t immediately reply to an email sent to him Monday via a Los Angeles law firm listed on his entry at the California State Bar Association’s website.

People who joined the Davises for Thanksgiving

Gray Davis’ holiday was Thanksgiving. Some of it might have been about the food traditionally served. Zingale said Davis ate a turkey sandwich for lunch every day, regardless of the time of year. Still, that wasn’t all about Thanksgiving that has resonated with Davis.

Thanksgiving is about different things. There’s the chance to sleep in and watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. There’s the chance to eat a nice meal. And there’s the chance for gratitude, the subtle spiritual component of what otherwise seems like a straightforwardly secular holiday.

Zingale worked for four California governors including Brown, for whom he was a student fellow while in college. He noted something that might not be well-known about Brown, Davis, Schwarzenegger and Newsom: Each is Catholic.

“All of the governors I worked for were so distinctly different from each other in personality and style and often in politics, but I would say that one thing they all had in common was a sense of gratitude — honored to be in the office of governor, gratitude for all that California is blessed with,” Zingale said. “I think their perspective on gratitude was informed by their common faith.”

Asked about gratitude, Davis, who will turn 82 on the day after Christmas, said Thanksgiving was ”by far” his favorite holiday. He then expounded on his faith.

“I always tell people we’re all God’s children and you may not like that person over there, but God made that person, man or woman,” Davis said. “He made you and He loves both of us equally. Not you more than them. Equally. So get over it if you don’t like them or find some way to find common ground or just keep your mouth shut.”

Davis and his wife appeared to seek common ground with the Thanksgiving gatherings they hosted beginning in 1998 at their 1,000-square-foot condo in a Doheny Drive high-rise in West Hollywood. “It’s too small,” Gray Davis told the Los Angeles Times about his condo in 2004. “I think the most we’ve ever had is seven at Thanksgiving.”

In colloquial terms, what the Davises were hosting is known as Friendsgiving, with the Davises welcoming a small, but diverse group.

There were the nuns, Sisters Adrian Marie Conrad (born Mary Elizabeth Conrad) and Thomas Jeanne Doriot (born Margaret Ann Doriot), who were 78 and 61, respectively when the dinners began.

The nuns had been traveling together to live and work for the Sisters of Providence, an apostolic order which sends their sisters to different areas. Stops for Sisters Conrad and Doriot before they came to LA included Henderson, Nev., where they were stationed at a group home for teenage girls who had legal difficulties.

Zingale said he couldn’t speak to what was in the Davises’ hearts in inviting the nuns to Thanksgiving but that he knew “faith is central to their lives. And so having that in common with the sisters, I’m sure it was a big part of their decision to celebrate a holiday about gratitude together.”

Still, the nun’s lives weren’t strictly about religious devotion. Belonging to an order based near Terre Haute, Indiana, the nuns adored sports teams from there. Once, some friends of Gray Davis invited the nuns to sit near the court in Los Angeles when the Lakers hosted the Indiana Pacers.

“I was watching the game on television and it appeared that the nuns were getting very excited every time Reggie Miller made a shot,” Gray Davis said.

Davis said that Sister Doriot was the more introverted of the two sisters, while Sister Conrad was more extroverted. During part of her time in LA, Conrad dealt with cancer and ultimately returned in the late 2010s to Indiana. “She still was a real kick to be around and always fun and just everyone who was around her just felt better afterwards,” Gray Davis said.

The nuns were regularly joined at the Thanksgiving dinners by Gray Davis’ longtime barber, disabled Vietnam War veteran Joe Gonzales. Davis said Gonzales, who didn’t reply to a request for comment, missed one or two of the dinners over the years to help the homeless. Gonzales would also pop out sometimes from the Davises to cater nearby events.

Sometimes, Sharon Davis’ brother Harry Ryer, who had schizoaffective disorder and would die in May 2018 at 57 from complications of kidney failure and diabetes, also came to the dinners. Ryer left his mental illness untreated, which could be extremely difficult for his family. Still, he was always comfortable at the Thanksgiving dinners the Davises hosted and the group of people it attracted.

“He knew he was in a safe environment, that they accepted him for who he was,” Sharon Davis said.

The Davises continued to host the group at Thanksgiving at their condo after Davis was sworn into office in 1999, was re-elected in 2002 and became the second governor in U.S. history successfully recalled in 2003. Recall voters directed their ire at Davis for an early 2000s energy crisis and for Davis running ads against Republican Richard Riordan during the 2002 primary to advance opponent, Bill Simon.

The 2003 Friendsgiving happened 10 days after Schwarzenegger took office, with the Davises hosting Ryer, Gonzales, Conrad and Doriot at their condo. In 2005, the Davises moved to Holmby Avenue and Whilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, where they would continue to host Thanksgiving with their friends for more than a decade thereafter.

How Thanksgiving unfolded with the Davises

Each year for Thanksgiving, Sharon Davis would cook a Turkey dinner and make side dishes like caramelized sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes and corn.

T,he attendees would say grace, with the nuns sometimes leading it. From there, conversation could vary. Davis said the nuns were more progressive than most Catholic priests “so they’re always fun to be with.” The nuns were generally loath to discuss their own difficulties but expounded on other areas.

“We’re talking about who may run for this, who may run for that,” Davis said. “They almost never, as I said, talked about their own situation.”

The dinners continued through Thanksgiving 2018. Sisters Conrad and Doriot returned to Indiana not long thereafter. Conrad died in 2019 at 99; Doriot died in 2022 at 85. The Davises will spend Thanksgiving with friends in Palm Springs this year, though they’ve yet to replicate what they had with the nuns.

“It was just a wonderful tradition,” Gray Davis said. “We really haven’t established a new tradition yet.”

The Davises, who have been married since 1980, have never had children. Sharon Davis said she couldn’t have them for medical reasons. Family became, in part. something that she and her husband could experience through Thanksgiving. It’s what makes the holiday extraordinary for her.

“I know people get together for Christmas or travel during the Christmas holiday, but Thanksgiving, to me, exemplifies an opportunity to have a true sense of family even if they’re not people that are related to you by blood,” she said. “They’re your family as an extension of people who care deeply about you and you care deeply about them.”

This story was originally published November 28, 2024 at 5:00 AM with the headline "A feast fit for a governor: Former California leaders share Thanksgiving favorites."