Peter Westbrook

Peter Jonathan Westbrook (April 16, 1952 – November 29, 2024) was an American saber fencer. He was a 13-time national and 3-time Pan American Games saber champion, five-time Olympian, and an Olympic bronze medalist. He founded the Peter Westbrook Foundation (PWF), a 501(c)(3) non-profit that uses fencing as a vehicle to help young people from under-served New York City communities develop life and academic skills. Westbrook died on November 29, 2024 in Manhattan, New York from liver cancer. He was 72 years old.

Westbrook's father, Ulysses Jonathan Westbrook, was an American G.I. stationed in Japan during the Allied occupation of Japan after World War II when he met Mariko Wado-Westbrook, a Japanese woman, in the city of Kobe. They married in 1950, and soon after they moved to the United States, eventually settling in Newark, New Jersey. Peter and his younger sister Vivian were born in the United States, Peter in St. Louis.

Peter was four when his father left, leaving his mother to raise the family in the Hayes Homes housing project in central Newark. She remained in Newark, given her Japanese relatives’ objection to her returning to Japan with Black children. Raising the children Catholic, Mariko bartered with priests at the local parochial school (St. Peters/Queen of Angels) in exchange for schooling for Peter and Vivian, cleaning the church and assisting on bingo night.

His mother, 66 years old at the time, was killed in December 1993. After she offered friendly advice while on a Newark bus to a 31-year-old, 200-plus pound, fellow female passenger with regard to the young child the woman was traveling with, the woman became angry at her, cursed her, told her to mind her own business, and then pummeled and kicked her to death. Peter Westbrook said: "I have never known such sadness". Her attacker pled guilty to aggravated manslaughter, and was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Westbrook's fencing career started at Essex Catholic High School ('70) in Newark, when he was 13 years old, after his mother enrolled him in fencing to keep him out of trouble. He trained under Dr. Samuel D'Ambola, a medical doctor and the founder of the school’s fencing program, winning a New Jersey state individual championship in his junior year.

Westbrook attended New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business, where he received a B.S. in Marketing in 1975. He received a full fencing scholarship, and trained under Hugo Castello, the multi-championship-winning coach who as of 1998 held the most wins of any college fencing coach in history.

In 1972, he began training with Csaba Elthes, a Hungarian saber coach who had emigrated to the United States, at the Fencers Club in New York City, but he stopped training with him after one year. He initially found Elthes to be intimidating, saying: "Csaba's theory is discipline with pain. Never a compliment, usually belittlement. I was stunned." It went beyond unkind words: "I thought he was crazy. Then he started hitting me in the legs with his sabre every time I made a mistake, and I was wearing short pants, too. He said, 'I want you to associate mistakes with pain.` And then, whack, whack, whack. Right across the thighs. Then I knew he was crazy." In 1973, he won the NCAA saber championship, and the NYU team won the team championship. Recognizing that his short time with Csaba had been beneficial, Westbrook returned to Csaba; as he recalled, "after a year, it just wasn`t the same. I knew I needed him. I couldn`t believe it, but I did."

Westbrook won the U.S. National Men's Sabre Championship 13 times (1974–75, 1979–86, 1988–89, and 1995). In 1974, as a college senior, Westbrook placed first at the Amateur Fencers League of America's (now known as USA Fencing) National Championships, beating among others Olympians Alex Orban and Paul Apostol. He was the first black fencer to win the U.S. men's saber national championship. Winning the Nationals made him an internationally recognized fencer.