It had the trappings of a society party -- white wine, canapes, lighted candles -- but the discourse of an academic conference.

That's what hosts Ron and Cinthia Haan intended when they invited 100 friends and some of the world's most renowned reading researchers to their Pacific Heights home recently. The purpose: to talk about a national study they are funding, through their own Haan Foundation, to help children with reading and learning problems.

The Haans' interest was spurred by their two children, Tiffany, now a junior in college, who has auditory processing problems, and Giano, now 14, who by the second grade could not read and only then was discovered to be severely dyslexic.

The Haans sought information from their children's private school about which reading programs might best help their son, but discovered that there was no standardized method -- backed up by scientific studies -- to match kids with learning disabilities with the programs that would be most effective. In the end, they sent Giano to Belmont's Charles Armstrong School for children with language disabilities. Even there, it was a matter of trial and error with various programs before Giano slowly learned to read.

The Haan Foundation is leading a public-private effort to finance clinical studies that show which programs work best for which children. Millions will be spent; the results are to be distributed to schools across the nation. The effort ties in with the Bush administration's education bill and the push to "leave no child behind."

The Haans are "leading the pack -- their effort is unique," said Dr. G. Reid Lyon, a research psychologist with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, who flew in from Washington, D.C., to talk to the gathering. He is a member of the Haan Foundation's board of directors.

He said that 38 to 40 percent of children nationwide cannot read and that researchers have figured out why. The Haans assert that if children can be matched with the proper intervention programs, their reading will be at their grade level within eight to 12 weeks.

With this month's cover of Fortune magazine devoted to "The Dyslexic CEO" and a recent PBS special, "Misunderstood Minds," focusing on learning disabilities, dyslexia is gaining increasing attention. It's even been reported that Neil Bush, brother of the president, experienced dyslexia as a child.

Others who came to learn about the Haans' effort included Paul Otellini, president of Intel Corp., and his wife, Sandy, who have a daughter with dyslexia. Also there was Paul Orfalea of Santa Barbara, who flunked second grade but went on to found Kinko's.

"I think what the Haans are doing is good work," he told the Scene. And then, in the spirit of the evening, he turned back to chat about left and right brain hemispheres, the corpus callosum and pictograms with one of the experts in attendance, John Gabrieli, an associate professor at Stanford.

ON A MUCH LIGHTER NOTE: Sally and Warren Debenham, John and Frances Bowes and Diane Chapman and Matthew Kelly, Jeanne and Deke Jackson and Harvey and Gail Glasser are among those heading for New York to attend Nan and Tommy Kempner's 50th wedding anniversary party -- the talk of NYC social circles -- on Friday. Nan, a San Francisco native, is an uber-socialite. How else to describe someone whose name has appeared in print 93 times in the past year alone?

The party invitation said to wear flowers (we expect they mean clothes, too, ) as the shindig will be at the New York Botanical Gardens. Yves Saint Laurent will come out of retirement to design Nan's evening gown, a top YSL official confirmed.

Chapman and Kelly will host a party for friends at the Brook, an exclusive club; Sally will lunch with fashion designers Carolina Herrera and Mary McFadden and is going out to Connecticut to visit her pal Bill Blass at home. And you?

OTHER BIG APPLE NEWS: Paul Wiseman, Suzanne Tucker and Ann Getty's furniture designs will make an appearance at Sotheby's "By Design" auction in New York on May 18.

E-mail Carolyne Zinko at czinko@sfchronicle.com. Her column runs Wednesdays in Datebook and Sundays in the Living section.

©2002 San Francisco Chronicle