The Story of a Benefactor

Benefactors are true and real. They invest their money wisely. They invest in people.

I wrote a few weeks ago about a group of West Texas ranchers who invested in our daughter. Now here is a story about a woman whose family came from a completely different world, a woman who appears in The Proper Bostonian, a woman who invested in my father…please read on.

If you have read a couple of my posts, you know that my parents sent me to Spain to spend a summer with my aunt, uncle and cousins when I was seventeen. During that summer I was enriched beyond measure. And, it was that summer that I heard a story I had never heard before. I had always known that my dad attended an ivy league school but how he got there was a detail I never knew. I had heard the family refer to Rachel. My grandparents had met her in their own home. You see, after my father and all his siblings had left the nest, my grandparents enjoyed opening their home to welcome visitors to their “casa de huésped”, guest house which also served as the Dutch embassy in DF. I thought Rachel was just a good friend of the family who happened to live in Boston near where Dad had gone to school. My grandparents were never without a loss for connections because they met so many interesting people through their small hospitality business. I assumed she was a good friend who had enjoyed her stay at their house and had simply returned the hospitality to their son. She offered my father hospitality and warm support during his years at school. She did do that, and so much more. He was a guest in her home for dinners. He attended wonderful parties where people tell me he proved his talents on the dance floor. Many years later, as a child I remember among all the annual Christmas cards, there was always one signed Rachel.

That summer I found out from Tía, my aunt, that this mysterious friend (to me) not only offered friendship but sponsored my father in the US and was his benefactor during the time he attended his ivy league school in the US. I was deeply humbled in the knowledge that her decision not only held influence over my father’s life but mine as well. Suddenly, I understood that her generosity and yes, philanthropy had far reaching impact touching the corners of my life. My dad graduated from his well known university, then worked for a major company. That company sent him to Monterrey, Mexico. He traveled home to Mexico City on weekends and there is where he met my mother. She and her mother spent a summer in Mexico, D.F. and stayed with my grandparents. A friend of my mother’s mother had recommended their home to stay during their Mexican vacation the summer of ’46. So my father met my mother briefly on weekends when he would return to visit his parents. At the end of that summer she and her mother returned home to the Pacific Northwest. Mom and Dad were engaged long distance by October. The story goes like this. My mother’s mother recognized the attraction and bought my mother a round trip bus ticket from their Northwestern state to San Antonio. My father met my mother in San Antonio. Over a dish of chocolate ice cream at the Saint Anthony Hotel, he proposed. She accepted. They returned to their respective homes and a wedding date was set for January 26. Because her grandfather couldn’t make that date, it was moved to February 2, yes, I know, Ground Hog’s Day…How romantic!

I was born several years later. I marvel at the miracle of their meeting that summer of ’46, the miracle of my grandparents opening a “casa de huésped” and the miracle of Rachel’s generous support. If any of those extraordinary variables had changed, I wouldn’t even be here today. Or would I?

As my aunt explained that summer in Spain, Rachel was the daughter in John Singer Sargent’s “Mrs. Fiske-Warren and Her Daughter Rachel.” I could only gasp, “The same Rachel who sent Christmas cards every year?” I asked my dad for his version of the story when I returned home from Spain. He confirmed it.

I told my husband the story years later when the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston had a special exhibit of Sargent’s impressionist works. One Christmas I opened a very special gift from him. It was a reproduction of that painting in a gold frame. How I loved him at that moment…that he had listened to my story and turned it into a tangible memory. When I view that reproduction of that painting hanging in our bedroom, I am filled with gratitude to that young girl whose philanthropy touched our family. And, I am filled with love and gratitude for my husband who pays attention.

"Mrs Fiske-Warren and Her Daughter Rachel" via Wiki commons

Georgette Sullins and Georgette Sullins’s Blog©, September 18, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Georgette Sullins and [Georgette Sullins's Blog] with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.