Washington, D.C. -- For 10 years, Lord Westover Productions has been dedicated to the arts and humanities. Now, with the launch of a new foundation, the Anon Foundation (not to be confused with QAnon--yikes), the new non-profits seeks to build bridges to unify all Americans no matter what political party they belong to--with a motto of remembering: We Are Americans First.
The launch party had a Jackie Kennedy theme as the foundation's founders take a great deal of inspiration from the life of the former First Lady who had a profound appreciation for the arts and it's influence on culture and politics in particular.
Lord Westover Productions has launched a new effort to bring attention to the arts. (Lord Westover Productions photo.)
Special guest for the foundation launch was Say Yes to the Dress reality show super star Monte Durham (left) who is self professed huge Jackie Kennedy fan. (Lord Westover Productions photo.)
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Jackie Kennedy serves as a type of inspiration or patron saint of the arts for the Anon Foundation (Jackie by Robert Dyber acrylic on canvas.)
So what does Jackie Kennedy have to do with Anon Foundation you might ask?
"Jackie Kennedy serves as type of inspiration for the new foundation," said Robert Hudson Westover, Chairman of the Anon Foundation. "I've admired her dignity and grace since childhood and she very much believed in the power of art to reach across all cultural, political and monetary boundaries."
The video is an end of summer view of our beautiful gardens. Every year at Easter we put Holy Water taken from the Grotto of the Virgin Mary outside the Justinian Wall in Istanbul and sprinkle it into the fountain which is the centerpiece to the garden we have dedicated to the Virgin Mother.
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
[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
James Purpura is emerging as one of the most profound and uniquely talented artists of a generation
Paris -
For artists to distinguish themselves is never easy. To distinguish themselves
in Paris is an altogether bigger deal. James Purpura,
a native of Ohio, has done exactly that. Starting April 1 and ending on April
13 Purpura’s wide range of paintings, including landscapes, portraits and the
fanciful, will be exhibited in one of the City of Lights most magnificent
buildings the City Hall of Paris' 5th Arrondissement.
A cityscape by Jame Purpura. (Used by permission.)
Purpura,
who sees colors in music, an almost sixth sense called synesthesia, has also
accomplished another rare feat among artists in that he has been able to
translate this concomitant sense for the world to see. According to Purpura he
sees colors in “Beats, instruments, layering, vocals, and lyrics can evoke
certain colors and brush strokes, and pieces of music in an infinite number of
ever-changing visuals.” His musical inspirations for painting includes
classical, pop, transcendental, and remixes.
The
artist's work is innovative and spontaneous, and never scripted. He likes to
play with colors and lets them answer each other on the canvas. Often,
characters such as animals and people begin to appear magically in the story
and he will give them finishing touches to complete these characters.
A landscape by James Purpura. (Used by permission.)
“My
approach gets people involved in the canvas as they lose themselves in color
and the story on the canvas. It allows them to escape and ask ‘Why is the moon
black? Why is the sun green? Why are there two suns? Why is there one sun but
the reflection of seven?’ This is how I see. This is how
I interpret the world.” said Purpura.
Seeing the film Titanic when it was released in December
1997 proved to be pivotal moment for me. That’s because watching Mr.
Cameron’s near exact replica of the 1912 White Star ocean liner reminded me of
another ship I had adored, imagined and built (the Revel model that is!) as a
child. A ship whose very name made me feel patriotic.
The S.S. United States.
Titanic made me want to know where the S.S.
United States had gone. I went on (what we called then) the World Wide Web and
discovered (to my delighted surprise) that America’s flagship was very much
still afloat and a former passenger, Mike Alexander, had started a Website to
bring awareness to her plight.
That following January I went to visit the United States for
the first time. I could hardly sleep the night before! I felt like a little boy going
to Disneyland for the first time! I’ll never forget seeing her red, white and
blue funnels for the first time that day. Her sleek profile. Her dramatic and
cutting bow.
She was weather beaten for sure, but where others saw discouragement
and a badly decaying vessel I saw hope and a glorious restoration like the RMS
Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA.
I was 33 years old and full of excitement
and possibilities. I didn’t care that the herculean task of saving this ship
would take years of my life. I didn’t care that many other interests where
vying with their own visions--and, sadly, personal self-aggrandized agendas.
I just knew I could do this.
And I began by starting an organization I named the S.S.
United States Foundation.
I’m not going delve into the details--the impossible odds of
creating and leading one of the largest all volunteer preservation non-profits
in the country--because this amazing story has been covered in many news stories and in
books.
Safe to say, the attention I sought to bring to the ship via
the SSUS Foundation, went well beyond anything I could have imagined. For the
first time since the ship won the Blue Riban for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic Ocean (and her untimely retirement in
1969) her story appeared in the New York Times, then the BBC World News Service,
then ABC World News Tonight and on and on. (Click on video below)
This constant national and international media attention
began in April 1999 and has never let up.
With success came attention and many now wanted to become
part of what had been a few, but highly devoted, Big U (her nickname) fans in varying fields of expertise
from advertising, public relations, media relation, maritime and
legislative-based professions.
The SSUS Foundation's greatest accomplish happened when we lead
the effort and succeeded in placing the S.S. United States on the National
Register of Historic Places when she was less than 50 years old. This "less than 50 years old" is
important because we had to prove the Big U met the National Register's stringent “National
Significance” criterion.
We did and the Big U was placed on the National Register in
June 1999 resulting in another round of national attention including a prime time
broadcast on CNN. (Click on video below)
But soon the reality of having to actually convince a municipality
to take her in as a Queen Mary type attraction set in. Meetings were held with
elected representatives but no one seemed to grasp (or have the vision) of what a
huge tourist attraction the SS United States could become—a classic problem in
preservation efforts.
Then the owner, who had allowed the SSUS Foundation free and near unfetter access to the ship passed away. She was sold to NCL and the Foundation’s
noble vision to see the S.S United States preserved as a monument to her splendor
(and being able to keep her on the National Register) seemed lost.
Then everything changed.
The official logo of the S.S. United States Foundation.
The Foundation's confrontational approached to NCL’s
renovation plans didn’t sit well with some members of the board of directors.
In the ensuing heightened climate of profound ideological
differences a new non-profit, the S.S. United States Conservancy, was created (or reemerged
from an existing organization as some would insist) and they succeeded in
purchasing the United States from NCL after the cruises line abandoned its
renovation plans.
Not long after the remaining board of the SSUS Foundation
voted to suspend any further activities and to not compete for our vision of
preservation.
Since that time I have maintained a social media
presence as a fascinated spectator of the SSUS Conservancy’s efforts to bring
their vision of the Big U to fruition--I even donated my last royalty proceeds from the book SS United States Fastest Ship in World (Turner) to the Conservancy. And until their recent announcement about the deal worked
out with Crystal Cruise Lines I was as unaware of their vision as anyone else.
Cover to the successful book SS United States Fastest ship in the World (Turner)
Let me be clear. I cannot begin to express my profound
disappointment in the future chosen by the SSUS Conservancy for this great
historic site.
To me the plans are an abomination of what I, and many others feel, was the epitome
of ship building. And I realize many feel differently but I very much disagree
with the argument that all that matters is that she sails again.
Sails as what?
To me it’s analogous to giving Queen Elizabeth a Hollywood-style face lift, collagen
lip injections, massive Dolly Parton-esque breast implants, a tummy tuck and a rear-end lift, put
her in a red, skin-tight beaded dress and parade her around with the Kardashian sisters.
Yes, what a comical and ridiculous site that would be and what horrid last visual memories of a great queen!
Yet, I’m
supposed to feel that what is planned for the S.S. United States is any
different?
Well, I can’t.
Now that the board of the SSUS Conservancy has made their
choice to, what I strongly feel, eviscerate the remaining historic integrity (as I
believe is clearly spelled in the requirements for historic designation by The
National Register of Historic Places), I will suspend any involvement in and
abandon my watch as a preservationist seeking to protect this amazing relic of maritime
greatness.
Who wouldn’t want a fairy
godmother? They would lavish you with gifts, of course, but more importantly
they would teach you how to be a better person by bringing out your inner
nobility. Lessons in Nobility is about how a very real fairy godmother changed the
author’s life from a self-destructive one to a life of noble aspirations and
wonderful achievements.
While
still a teenager, Robert Westover was introduced to his “fairy godmother” who,
like the plot of so many Russian novels, was a delightfully eccentric countess.
Countess Olga de Chravpovitsky was raised in the court of Tsar Nicholas II. She
was a playmate of the legendary Grand Duchess Anastasia and at one point even
encountered the mysterious Siberian monk, Rasputin.
Despite
the horrors of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Olga’s family managed to escape.
Exiled in America, she became a relative (through marriage) to Jacqueline
Bouvier Kennedy and helped influence the former First Lady’s fascination with
imperial Russia—a fact known by few. But all these things were just the baubles
of a life of any well-born person with great connections. What made Olga
special was the nobility she expressed in nearly everything she did—and how she
taught it to Robert.
So how
did a middle class kid from LA become the “honorary godson” to such a regal and
highborn woman? That will be for the reader to decide. Some will see it as pure
luck while others will see it as fate. But, no matter the conclusion, the story
of how Robert was taught to be noble is one that everyone can gain from.
The
reader will walk away with a better understanding of what being noble is and
how they can apply these lessons in their own lives. Sometimes dramatic and
often moving, Lessons in Nobility has a timeless appeal.
Never
before Published Insight into Jackie Kennedy’s Life As an
exciting addition to the book, the author has included an article he wrote
about the relationship between Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Hugh D. “Yusha”
Auchincloss III, Olga's newphew. Step brother and sister, Yusha and Jackie
shared a love that lasted their entire lives.
Mr.
Westover had unique access to Yusha Auchincloss and interviewed him on several
occasions at Hammersmith Farm in Newport, Rhode Island. The interviews, in the
twilight of Mr. Auchincloss' life, reveal just how much love he and Jackie had
for each other.
Robert
Hudson Westover is a professional writer of articles, humorous columns, and was
the subject of many national news stories including ABC World News Tonight
(2000), The New York Times (1998/2003) and the BBC (1998/2000). His "Lord
Westover" blog was nominated to the Washington Post's "Best Blog
Award" by its readers and mentioned in the Christian Science Monitor. Mr.
Westover is co-author of the well-received “S.S. United States – Fastest Ship
in the World” (Turner). He and his husband, Gay rights activist Tom Fulton,
live in Virginia.
