May 7, 2015

Finest Hour 117, Winter 2002-03

Page 26

BY NIGEL KNOCKER, CONFERENCE CHAIRMAN


The 19th International Churchill Conference was held in the magnificent Lansdowne Resort, in Leesburg, Virginia, on September 19th through 22nd. Over 220 people attended and sixty-one students joined the conference for the last day.

The theme “Churchill and Intelligence,” as Lady Soames said in her letter of welcome, was “a truly fascinating one, and concerns a whole dimension in the panorama of Winston Churchill’s life which has been open to research only relatively recently, for obvious reasons.”

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The scene was set by the film, “The Man Who Never Was” amusingly introduced by Max Arthur. Two presentations were given by Sir Martin Gilbert, who covered Churchill’s interest and fascination with intelligence both up to and after 1940. David Stafford and Warren Kimball talked about Roosevelt and Churchill, and were ably supported by Ruth Ive who had been a censor on the transatlantic radio link from 1942 to 1945. Rita Kramer told of the work of the Special Operations Executive, Max Arthur of the role of the SAS and Commandos.

The book discussion was based on the first of Churchill’s war volumes, The Gathering Storm, with James Muller, Richard Langworth, David Stafford and Warren Kimball. The final formal presentation was on “Churchill and the Cold War,” expertly handled by David Jablonsky, David Stafford and John Ramsden. Two interesting visits were made to the new International Spy Museum in Washington and to the Presidential yacht Sequoia.

An enjoyable evening was spent at Oatlands Plantation, a 19th century house and garden during which there was Civil War entertainment. The formal “Chartwell Dinner” was held on the Saturday evening at which Celia Sandys spoke about “Memories of My Grandfather,” and Commander Mike Franken, first commanding officer of the USS Winston S. Churchill, spoke about the ship’s first months of its life with the fleet. On Saturday the students from universities in the area, who had their own programme in the morning, joined the main conference for the afternoon and evening.

The conference was organised by a Churchill Centre international committee consisting of this writer (Chairman), Craig Horn (USA), John Plumpton (Canada), Judy Kambestad (USA), Lorraine Horn (USA), and Jerry Dumont (Vice President and General Manager of the Lansdowne Resort). It was a truly international cast, and notable also in being almost entirely planned by email communications. To give you the flavour of this fine event, we publish herewith two news reports generated by local papers.

The Washington Post, 21 September 2002 by Rosalind S. Helderman

To the disappointment of collectors worldwide, it is difficult to find the stump of a cigar once smoked by Winston Churchill himself. Churchill collected his cigar stumps and presented them to his gardener, who would carefully grind them up and recycle them by smoking them in his own pipe.

That is the story as told by John Mather, a Bowie, Maryland physician attending the 19th annual International Churchill Conference yesterday in Leesburg, Virginia. Mather, who serves in high executive position for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, is an amateur Churchill scholar in his spare time, working on a book about how the great man’s health influenced his work.

Likewise, for most of the year, Laurence Geller is CEO of Strategic Hotel Capital, which owns thirty hotels, including the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill. But he was better known yesterday as vice chairman of the 3,000member Churchill Centre that sponsors the conference.

Geller, who collects Churchill ceramics and has 700 books by and about him, said he looks to Churchill’s long life as a soldier, politician and orator for inspiration in his business dealings. “I have a big mouth, and I have a tendency to get knocked down a lot,” he said. “Churchill had an absolutely unbelievable belief in himself. When he was knocked down, he’d get back up.”

Scholars and students, professionals and amateurs, collectors and war veterans, gather each year to trade stories and lectures about the statesman who led Great Britain through the war. This year, the 220 participants paid particular attention to Churchill’s interest in secret intelligence.

The conference convened at a boom time for The Churchill Centre. Interest in Churchill skyrocketed after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, buoyed by the news that then-New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani read a Churchill biography for inspiration when at last he returned home in the early hours of September 12th. Politicians of every stripe quoted his words to evoke strength in the face of attack. “Our phone seemed like it never stopped ringing,” said Craig Horn, the Centre’s treasurer. “People wanted a Churchill quote, or they wanted to verify a quote.”

Its work has been expanding so rapidly that The Churchill Centre is hiring its first employee and opening an office on 17th Street in Washington. The Internet also has been good to the group, said Richard Langworth, chairman of the Centre’s board of trustees. Members’ average age—now 58 in the United States and 65 abroad—is dropping because of new members who joined through its website. “That’s where the future is,” said Langworth, who was an editor for Automobile Quarterly before helping, in 1981, to resurrect The Churchill Centre, which had gone moribund in the late 1970s. Following the terrorist attacks, Langworth spent “three weeks” supplying and verifying Churchill quotes for everyone from national politicians and newspapers to local radio hosts.

Among the conference participants were two students from Christendom College in Front Royal, Steve Kunath, 19, and James Maldonado-Barry, 21, who discovered The Churchill Centre online. “We didn’t know there was such a subculture,” Maldonado-Barry said yesterday. “It was a little unexpected.” Next year, the conference will be held in Bermuda. That was unexpected too, but it will mark the 50th anniversary of the first postwar summit conference, held there in November 1953.

Among the speakers in Virginia were Sir Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s official biographer, and Ruth Ive, who worked as a British censor and monitored conversations between Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, reminding them when they spoke too frankly. Between lectures, conference delegates perused tables of books, plates and oil paintings of the great man. Also on sale were memorabilia from U.S.S. Winston S. Churchill, a Norfolk-based destroyer launched in 1999, hawked by members of the ship’s crew for the ship’s morale fund.

Churchill Centre members had pushed hard for a ship to be named for him—all of him, including his middle initial. Winston always used his “S,” part of an agreement he made with American novelist Winston Churchill at the turn of the last century. “We’re purists,” laughed Horn, who will retire soon after a 34-year career as a food broker to work on his book about Theodore Roosevelt and Churchill. (“Everybody has a book idea,” he said.) The conference concluded September 21st with a black-tie dinner followed by cognac and, of course, cigars.

The Loudon Times-Mirror, Herndon, Virginia by Jon Echtenkamp

A mid the tinkling of teaspoons and coffee cups at the breakfast buffet overlooking the golf course, you could almost hear the echoes of Churchill’s emphatic speeches that roused his countrymen to their “finest hour” fighting Hitler’s Germany in the Second World War.

“He’s beyond a hero,” said Richard Mastio during a coffee break Friday morning at the 19th International Churchill Conference, which convened for three days at the resort. Mastio and his wife Susie, a retired couple from California, were attending their fifth Churchill conference. The annual meetings bring together members of Churchill organizations from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, with next year’s event, the twenty-second in a long line that began with three people meeting at the Churchill Memorial in Missouri, set for Bermuda. Susie Mastio said her interest in Churchill began years ago when she learned Churchill’s oratory had inspired President Kennedy’s speeches and that Churchill’s mother was American. “It just fueled a lifelong interest,” she said. “We appreciate the courageous stand he took,” Richard said. “Churchill should be the one we look to from history, lest we be doomed to repeat it.”

Over the Mastios’ shoulders, a queue stretched down the hall of conference attendees waiting to meet Sir Martin Gilbert, the acclaimed historian who has written a 31-volume biography of Churchill and much else on Churchill, Holocaust and World War II subjects. Gilbert, looking remarkably young for a man with more than 100 books to his credit, addressed the conference about Churchill’s influence in the intelligence world.

“He makes it electric,” Susie Mastio said of Gilbert’s talk. Like pilgrims, dozens stood with armfuls of Gilbert’s massive volumes, waiting to have him autograph them. A man from Massachusetts barely slowed down as he strode past clutching a box loaded with Gilbert’s books for him to sign. “I have two more boxes in my room,” he said before rushing off to retrieve them.

Among the honored guests was Celia Sandys, one of Winston Churchill’s ten grandchildren. Dressed in sensible clothes more fitting for the author she is than the aristocratic offspring of one of history’s greatest men, Sandys reminds a visitor of her famous grandfather with her steely gaze, resolute jaw line and short reddish hair. “Tony Blair, George Bush and particularly Mayor Giuliani…have found inspiration in Winston Churchill,” she said. “And I think people will find inspiration in him for many years to come. His example is everlasting.”

That sentiment was quickly joined by Dr. Jerry Morelock, director of the Winston Churchill Memorial and Library in Fulton, Missouri, where Churchill delivered his famous “Iron Curtain” speech in 1946. “Churchill is still looked at as the gold standard for leadership,” Morelock said.

One of the highlights of the conference was an address by 85-year-old Ruth Ive, who served as one of the British censors who monitored British and American phone conversations to ensure that no one slipped in case the Germans were listening. One of her first jobs was to monitor a call between a “Mr. White” and a “Mr. Smith,” she was told, though she quickly realized they were Churchill and Roosevelt. “I was absolutely stunned that I was sitting there listening to them,” she said.

Ive related her admiration for Churchill’s energy that kept him working daily until 2 a.m. throughout the war, and for his gentler qualities. “He could charm the birds off a tree, and it was absolutely essential,” she said.

Richard Mastio, meanwhile, summed up the impact that the gatherings have, evoking Churchill’s own relentless optimism. “You walk away feeling there is some hope for tomorrow.”


Col. Knocker is Chairman of the International Churchill Society of the UK. The two newspaper reports are reprinted by kind permission.

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