Peter Westbrook, a six-time Olympic fencermental slot, was a force of nature.
So when my daughter called me this week to say he had died after years of treatment for liver cancer, it landed heavily on me, as it did for her.
Westbrook, 72, was the founder of the Peter Westbrook Foundation, which introduced young people — many of them Black and underprivileged — to the world of fencing.
That foundation is where my daughter took up the sport. Westbrook had identified her talent and offered her weekday lessons. And once you were in his “family,” he was nurturer, soother and patriarch from that point forward.
Westbrook was a second father — or maybe even a primary one — to many of the children in his program, including my daughter.
It was impossible to be dreary in his presence.
His face had molded itself to allow his toothy smile to perpetually sit in it. Cheer was his default setting. He was a ball of energy and light.
Until the end, he held on to a boyishness, an endearing lightheartedness — goofiness, the children might say — that was precious and priceless.
He not only taught his students how to be amazing athletes and scholars, but he also showed them what it was to live and be alive, how to build community, how a relentless pursuit of passion was a manifestation of its own kind of love.
The way he would counsel crestfallen athletes after a tough loss, making sure that they understood that their confidence was not crushed, making them understand that in many cases just making it to the match at all — a step into this traditionally white and wealthy world — was itself a victory.
And it was in that environment of deep caring and devotion that he built an Olympic dynasty of Black fencers. Since 2000, most of the Black fencers the United States sent to the Olympics were part of Westbrook’s foundation.
It isn’t often in life that you meet truly transformative figures, people whose vision of their purpose and mission in life is so clear that it forces you to question yours, whose commitment to a single, benevolent good is so unwavering that you are left in awe of it.
Peter Westbrook was one of those people.
I will miss the days when he found me on the border of my daughter’s strip, a knot of anxieties. “Hi, dad. How’s she doing?” His smile wide and spirit easy, he calmed me. And more important, he calmed her. In his presencemental slot, the world shifted, and it settled.