The men enjoyed swapping stories and talking local politics over coffee. Dubbed the “Goofoffers,” for their predilection for chit-chat, more than 1,000 men were members of the group over the years — some of them Newport’s most influential men. Members of the group will gather for a reunion 7:30 a.m. today at Woody’s Diner, 3461 Via Lido, near the original location of the coffee shop.
“It was kind of the movers-and-shaker people in town,” said Bill Warmington, a former Goofoffer and longtime Newport Beach resident. “A lot of the men were influential in the beginnings of Newport.”
The group included, at one time or another, real estate magnate Donald Bren’s father, Milton, screen legends John Wayne, Andy Devine and Joey Bishop, and President Richard Nixon.
“It was just a way you could talk about anything and everything,” Warmington said. “Who did what in Catalina last weekend, what’s going on with the county board of supervisors. It was a general coffee klatch.”
Grupe had never seen Wayne madder than when his gold-gilded Goofoffers coffee mug went missing from Richard’s Lido Coffee Shop, but the rest of the guys all chipped in and bought him a new one.
None of the mugs were locked up back then, they all sat out in the open on a rack at the coffee shop, Grupe said. Coffee was served on the honor system. A dime would get a customer endless refills, although the occasional man would get caught only leaving a penny.
Wayne drove a beat-up station wagon around town and the two men would occasionally talk USC football over breakfast at the coffee shop, Grupe said
Grupe still has Wayne’s old mug with the late actor’s name painted on it. The Goofoffer mugs bear a drawing of a man leaning back in his chair, “goofing off,” Grupe said.
