Success in fencing, success in life

By BILL DURYEA

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 30, 2000

For more than a decade, in hundreds of boardrooms across the country, Peter Westbrook gave a version of this fundraising pitch:

I will teach the sport of fencing to poor black children. They will get better grades, go to college, get good jobs. They will thrive in the world beyond the inner city. And some of them will go to the Olympics.

When Westbrook, the last American fencer to win an Olympic medal, made this prediction in the St. Petersburg Times in January 1998, his non-profit foundation was taking in about $70,000 a year. This modest support indicated a certain sympathy from corporate America, but hardly blank-check faith in his unique recipe for success.

"No one believed me," said Westbrook, 48. "But I knew. I knew because I fence."

He knew because this is what fencing had done for him.

On Monday, the seven-member U.S. Olympic fencing team will be named. Three members of the team, Erinn Smart, her older brother Keeth and Akhnaten Spencer-El, are students of Westbrook at his fencing club in New York City.

"Erinn and Keeth were the first two people who walked through the door, that was February 1991," Westbrook said.

In a story titled "En Garde Against the Ghetto," Spencer-El, known as Akhi, was the uncommonly gifted sabre fencer that Westbrook struggled to beat in a practice bout.

"I can't beat Akhi anymore," Westbrook said last week. "With Keeth I'm 50-50."

Spencer-El, 21, did not grow up as poor as Westbrook, who lived with his sister and Japanese mother in the housing projects of Newark, N.J. But Westbrook saw himself in his student. He channeled Spencer-El's physical strength and street-fighter's instincts into the gentlemanly savagery of the fencing strip, and Spencer-El succeeded quickly.

In 1999, he won the national championship in sabre, the most swashbuckling of the three fencing disciplines. The title is one Westbrook has won 13 times, but Spencer-El won it at an earlier age.

Erinn Smart, a junior at Columbia, earned a spot on the U.S. women's foil squad because she was on the American team that placed in the top eight at the World Championships.

Spencer-El and Keeth Smart, who has a semester left at St. John's University, claimed their spots by accumulating more points in 12 international competitions than any other sabre fencers from North and South America. But they were not assured of making the team until the end of a tournament last week in Bulgaria.

"It was ridiculously hard what they did," Westbrook said.

Believers are more plentiful these days.

CNN will air a documentary on the Peter Westbrook Foundation in November, he says.

Fundraising is still a monumental chore, but donations have doubled to about $150,000 a year. To cover the growing cost of academic tutors, equipment and international travel, Westbrook said, the foundation requires a budget of $350,000 a year.

Each Saturday, more than 100 kids show up to cross swords, vying to become the next Olympic hopeful.

On the same weekend that Spencer-El and Keeth Smart qualified for the U.S. team, another of Westbrook's proteges, Ivan Lee, won a bronze medal at the Junior World Championships in Indiana.

" "You say you're making Olympians, but who says so?' " Westbrook said, quoting his doubters. "Well, the United States says so. "We're really changing lives. We're legit."

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