around & about - Winston Churchill

45A:
R, no crop
Above left: Jane and Caspar
Weinberger, CW with his KBE,
which made him Sir Caspar in Britain. Above right: Larry Kryske, MC at
Bretton Woods 1988, married Naomi Gottlieb, cochairman at Dallas
1986, lived happily ever after, and are still Centre members. Larry runs
Churchillian leadership programs at www.yourfinesthour.com.
45c:
R, crop B
Above: Alistair and Jane Cooke
relaxing with Karen and David
Sampson (who went on to become
Deputy Secretary of Commerce),
1988 Conference. Right: San
Francisco Conference VII chairman
Merry Alberigi with Timothy Robert
Hardy CBE, longtime honorary
member and guest speaker on at
least four occasions. We’ve seen
them all: in our humble opinion Tim
is the most true-to-life actor ever to
portray Sir Winston Churchill.
45b:
R, crop L&R
45b:
R, crop L
Above: Karen
Sampson,
RML, Barbara
Langworth,
Alistair Cooke
at Bretton
Woods
Conference V,
1988.
FINEST HoUR 140 / 45
Owing to our inexperience, and what is known as
“creative billing” in the hotel business, Dallas ran up an
$8000 loss. We were living “mouth to hand” in those days,
but somehow treasurer George Lewis scraped the money
together. One director complained (rightly) that the
treasury should not be financing good times for a few at
the expense of all. We vowed never again to lose money, a
vow we kept through the period in this account.
V BRETTON WOODS, 1988: Barbara Langworth’s
second event was held at the majestic Mount Washington
Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. We nearly had
President Reagan, and we did get Alistair Cooke and then-
Governor John Sununu, with over 250 at each dinner.
Sununu spoke off-the-cuff, proudly recalling that his bellwether
state of New Hampshire had made Sir Winston an
honorary citizen before the U.S. Congress. Alistair Cooke
was superb, recalling the Churchill of his youth in England
(page 33). This was the first conference addressed by the
academics—Ray Callahan, Hal Elliott Wert and Ted
Wilson. Scholars have contributed to every event since. Ray
Callahan was with us in Vancouver twenty years later.
A notable faux pas was when the head table (which
we have since dropped in favor of spreading around our
celebrities) marched in and John Edison’s trousers fell
down. Bill Ives, next in line, grabbed them and held them
up while John demurely took his seat and reconnected his
braces. The Mount Washington was being renovated, and
many of us had rooms not redone since the 1944 Bretton
Woods Monetary Conference! Another lesson learned:
check all the rooms they intend to put you in....
VI LONDON, 1989: This was mainly a dinner with
Maurice Ashley, Churchill’s literary aide on Marlborough,
and Robert Hardy, the greatest Churchill actor ever, during
the fourth Churchill Tour, with the tour party and UK
members. We dined at the Waldorf Hotel on what Mr.
Hardy described as a “hot Egyptian evening.” We
announced that the Americans might remove their jackets,
the British would have to keep theirs on, and the
Canadians could do as they pleased as usual. Maurice, the
author of Churchill as Historian (page 23), gave a delightful
talk on his experiences, though his wife fainted in the heat
and cigar smoke. Happily, she quickly recovered! It was our
Patron Lady Soames’s first conference, and we are happy to
look back now on ten events buoyed by her presence.
VII SAN FRANCISCO, 1990: As Saddam Hussein was
invading Kuwait, we invaded San Francisco in a conference
chaired by Merry Alberigi. (The word “conference” was her
idea, substituting for “convention.”) We enjoyed three
memorable days with Lady Soames and Robert Hardy at
the Fairmont Hotel. There were a wine tasting, a cruise of
San Francisco Bay, excellent scholarly papers, and some
good debates with such scholars as Larry Arnn. Robert
Hardy’s speech (page 34) was a classic. We hosted over 275,
an attendance record for conferences up to that time. >>