An Open Letter to Our Beloved American Family

Dear America - Let us start by saying  we have unwavering support for our incredibly positive American way of life. We lead the world in the newest ideas of making progress, and being positively progressive, contrary to much of what is said by many. We Americans, since our founding and throughout our history, continue to strive to be better, especially in expanding matters of freedom and equality.  

Tom and Robert, a married Gay couple for
20 years have
Loved America all their lives. 

It amazes us on how much We all work to improve our lives and our communities and our bellowed country--just look at the progress for LGBT rights over the last 30 years!  And We continue to find inspiration from our still cutting edge founding documents, confidant that tempered with understanding, history, and wisdom that each generation, both the young and old, will aspire to new heights as we celebrate our freedoms engaging freely in enterprise, civil rights, and important national priorities. 

We, more than ever, demand freedom of thought given to all, but without misrepresentation, which then flow towards actions which exalt good, and create beauty and order which is conducive to human flourishing. And We should always welcome newcomers from around the globe who are able to build up America, with their unique and exciting capabilities, as they contribute to strengthening our national fabric today and into the following centuries. 

So let's, together, raise up hard work, self-reliance, loyalty to and love of nation, faith in God, honesty, strong families, and minimal class consciousness--the American way. 

We are overwhelmingly a fair people, greatly underestimated by our adversaries. During this time of disruption, all should know that things are not always what they seem on the surface, or as we are being told by many. So don't be taken in by the rancor and chaos some contribute to around us. These are the crashing waves of a temporary storm but the strong calm currents have never been disturbed by the ferociousness of the violent and self-consumed. 

Do not be afraid to stand up for what is right--and America with all her blemishes, glory and hope is a shining light to the world. WE will build an even stronger and more resolute America able to further anchor to the enduring values developed and codified by imperfect messengers of liberty.  

Though inarticulately at times, we are fighting to sharpen our vision of needed changes to make America as great as possible. This is a wonderful goal. Now with the veil more removed, the true challenge to our past, present and future--America herself--stands is stark relief to the horrific history of man's inhumanity toward man. We are now actually even more up to slaying the true dragon--the hatred of the principles of liberty for all enshrined in our founding documents. Many now know that they have billions of miles to go, if they in fact can EVER sleep.

Like so many of us in our great American family, WE believe in equality for all and the idea that our country, despite the challenges we now face, is and will continue to be the best hope for the betterment of humanity. But we also know that our creator gave us the precious gift of conscience--of choice to do right or wrong--and that, unfortunately, many of us chose wrong over right far too often in the past, in our present and likely in our future. But this is not an indictment of America but rather the manifest human condition that our founding principles continually force us to examine and forge a more perfect union.  

With All Our Love and Devotion,

Tom Fulton and Robert Hudson Westover

BLM Mom Way Ahead of Her Time

[UPDATE: The official cause of my mother's death was "complications due to Covid-19". Please protect the most vulnerable in our population by at least wearing a face mask while in public spaces.]

Mardelle Hudson Westover 1938 to 2020

My mom has passed.

It was a tumultuous last two years of her fighting “the system” the term she used to describe the ten odd nursing homes she lived in during this time. Often lovely facilities she would liken to prisons and as she would later say she “escaped” from like some geriatric Houdini.

But this was to be excepted.

Mardelle was always a rebel, a fighter for the downtrodden and defiant almost literally to her last breath.

She lived her truth. She truly did.

For instance, even as a child, she felt strongly that racism was a disease that had to be eradicated. As a child in the 1940s she angered her teachers by opposing the inequality of the black community. In the 1940s!

As a child.

Wow.

Her BFF, Jackie, (literally they stayed friends to the end) enjoyed recounting the moment when as a teenager in the early 1950s in Santa Monica, California, mom took her new friend, a young black man from South Africa, to church at the very white 5th Church of Christ Scientists one bright sunny afternoon. “Your mom walked with him right down to the front of the church heads turning all the way!”

In the Calvinist-based Christian Science church there are no rituals including baptism. So some Christian Scientists “adopt” honorary god parents. My mom chose a black woman, a daughter of a slave, as her honorary family. We called her momma Broyels. She was a spiritual healer in the Christian Science church and was very effective. Momma Broyels died in the 1970s at nearly 100 years of age.

Mardelle in 1968 with her honorary
godmother "Mama Broyels".
(Westover family photos)

On a personal level my mother eradicated any sense of racial difference for her children by encouraging us to befriend black kids in our neighborhoods and at school. Because of this my best friend in junior high was a black kid named Tony Davis. We were inseparable and even broke in to MGM studios together running into a casting agent who was so amused by our “forwardness” that he cast us in a film.

It’s strange when your last parent passes. When my dad, Lawrence Robert, died, I was 31. He only lived to 58 but he and mom had a powerful love, so powerful that mom never remarried--out living dad by 25 years! 

My husband, Tom, told me a lot of soul searching begins when the last parent is buried. 12 hours into mom’s passing it has already begun for me.

Without her influence of equality for all I would have been a very different person.

Without her constant and emphatic insistence on forgiving all who had harmed her I would be a very different person.

Without her love for the arts and humanities I would be a very different person.

And, without her love for God, and the Universe He created, I would most certainly been a different person.

As the sediment of life with my “crazy” mom is sifting away, now faster than ever, the peaks and valleys are coming into stark relief and I am beginning to see this woman as the complicated, loving, angry, forgiving, defiant, selfish and generous person she was and will be remember by those who knew and loved her.

Welcome to heaven, mom, where the only skin color is the light of Love.

Mom and dad shortly before they were married in 1957.
(Westover family photos.)

(I have included this link to a testimony my mother wrote many years ago. I can think of no better eulogy as the highest mountain peak of her life—risking her life to save another: https://sentinel.christianscience.com/issues/1967/9/69-39/one-summer-afternoon-while-at-the-beach-with-my-four-children