George de Forest Lord D.C.

On Friday, June 30, 2023 George de Forest Lord departed from this world and began the next stage of his journey toward the Abha Kingdom. He was a sensitive and generous person whose heart was full of love for the Baha’i Faith.

"Woody" had a great sense of humor and his Maine stories were always fun once you got the joke, which true to the New England sense of humor often slipped by at first. He was gifted in the use of different voices and accents and would occasionally recite quite long scenes from Firesign Theatre. On occasion he found something so funny (even something he came up with himself) that he would laugh uncontrollably. And I don't think I've seen this, but he swore to me that there had been times when he laughed so hard he literally had to lie down on the ground!

He was born to George deForest Lord and Ruth Ellen (du Pont) Lord, so his real name was his father's plus "junior." Following family tradition, he tried to drop the "Junior" when his father died, but the IRS and various other institutions seemed attached to thinking of him as still being a junior.) His mother gave him the nickname Woody; he has always been known by both names by various people throughout his life. He grew up in New Haven as the middle child, with his sister Pauline and his brother Henry. George Sr. was a professor at Yale University's English department where he taught essentially his entire career, turning down a college presidency and a position at the National Portrait Gallery. He did accept the Mastership of Trumbull College, one of Yale's residential undergraduate "colleges." While the family lived in the Trumbull Master's House, Woody met, unbeknownst to him at the time, his first Baha'i contacts, chief among whom was History Professor and member of the National Spiritual Assembly Firuz Kazemzadeh. The senior George also appointed a Black "fellow" of the college, John Daniels, who may have been the first Black fellow of any college and who went on to be elected the first Black mayor of New Haven. Another interesting development which Woody became aware of later was that John's then wife Bess Daniels was also a Baha'i!

Ruth Lord, despite coming from a wealthy but not academic family, also had a deep love and respect for English. Like Woody's father, she became a published author.

In that setting, and given the good quality of his elementary school instruction, it is unsurprising that George Jr. also developed a deep love for the English language. He was lucky enough at his elementary school, to study Macbeth, which he nearly memorized, learn the Greek alphabet and fall in love with French and even math. He attended the Choate School in Wallingford, CT, where he greatly improved his Latin, took two years of Greek, and took the school's most advanced French course in his junior year. He graduated from Choate in 1969 and went on to earn a B.A. in French from Washington University in St. Louis in 1976, the year after he began his studies at Life Chiropractic College.

A word about his interest in languages: He developed the idea along the way that he should study all the languages that his father knew in part, i.e. Greek, Latin, French, and German, not counting the obvious English. But there was a further powerful influence: James Bond also spoke French and German!

During a break from University, George founded the Sunshine Inn vegetarian restaurant at 8 1/2 South Euclid in St. Louis. His main job was to grind the whole wheat flour and bake the bread. Shortly before opening he was still figuring out how to make pitas and English muffins. He learned recently that the recipe for English muffins is a big secret, but nobody told him that at the time! In late August and early September of 1974, the workers at the Sunshine Inn were surprised to find the restaurant more full than it ever had been for lunches and dinners. It turned out that the occasion was the "First National Baha'i Conference of the Five Year Plan." Woody (like several of his employees) had already been on a spiritual quest of sorts, but the Baha'is impressed him as no other spiritual or religious group previously had. People didn't seem to notice that they were of different races or believe that it should cause any friction between them. And they were still calm and polite when it took Woody & company two hours to feed these folks lunch.

The unexpected crowds caused the restaurant to run out of food on Friday night and had to close, freeing Woody up to attend a massive Baha'i public meeting in downtown St. Louis. The hook was set and the newly Christian Woody became interested for the first time ever in biblical prophecy. Some local Baha'is gave him two books. One Monday, the restaurant's day off, it was as if he heard a voice telling him, "Read Thief in the Night." studying the Faith he reached the conclusions that it was from God and God knew more about any given topic than he did! This cleared the way in his mind to officially align himself with this faith which had been almost totally unknown to him six months prior. He "declared" in December 1974 and remained a staunch member of the Faith forever after.

George enrolled in Life Chiropractic School in Marietta, GA in the fall of 1975. The next year he decided to put his French to good use and go to French-speaking Africa and Europe as a traveling teacher. But this plan was delayed by a disease and a somewhat long recovery period during which he was "grounded" in New Haven. That did present the opportunity to the procrastination-prone Woody to write some papers which Washington U. professors wanted in order to give him final grades in their courses. That brought him close to a B.A. but not all the way. But during his Africa trip, he received word that all he needed to do to complete the requirements was to pay the tuition for a Black Studies course from the previous year. Fair enough, he thought, except that he hadn't taken any Black Studies that year! For the rest of his life he was convinced that Baha'u'llah arranged for him to get "honorary independent study" credit for his trips to Africa.

The trip to Africa and Europe was long, lasting about three months, but fulfilling. The first country he visited in the vast continent was the one then called Zaire. (President Mobutu Sese Seko had decreed that the Congo River, the country (the former Belgian Congo) and even the main monetary unit were to be called Zaire. This was very convenient because the Congo Republic is on the far side of the Zaire, er, Congo River. The country's name has reverted to "Democratic Republic of the Congo," which not only sounds like the name of a communist country but also sounds a whole lot like the opposite-bank neighbor.) A few days after his arrival in Kinshasa, where he met several wonderful Persian, Belgian and Canadian Baha'is, he was asked to visit the Baha'is in a small city downriver whose name escapes him. A chance meeting with some schoolboys gave rise to a correspondence with one of the whose English teacher turned out to be an old friend from Washington U!

Another assignment involved flying to the somewhat larger city called Inongo, which is situated on the large Lake Maï-Ndombe. On day as he crossed a square at the local Catholic school, some students approached him to ask him to tell them about the Faith. Suddenly there must have been some forty schoolboys gathering around asking him questions! It was an amazing experience.

Another interesting experience involved being told by a high local official that if George knew Americans as he did, George would realize that Bahá'u'lláh and 'Abdu'l-Bahá were Americans!

Also about Inongo:

1) It turns out that the lake has a tragic history of old and overloaded "whaleboats," really not much like the original New England version, capsizing with hundreds of passengers on board.

2) V.S. Naipaul wrote a well-received novel titled A Bend in the River, whose chief protagonist visits a town called "Benongo" in Zaïre, which is home to a Catholic mission. It was easily recognized as the same mission which was nice enough to put me up for a few days, and the priests and "brothers," all of them either Belgian or Dutch, were easily recognized too. George liked the same "brothers" that Naipaul did!

3) George's favorite Congolese singer, Kanda Bongo Man, turns out to be from Inongo.

Next, he traveled to Côte d'Ivoire, unofficially called Ivory Coast in English. This was a connecting point for him to go to Upper Volta, which is now Burkina Faso. His stay in Upper Volta coincided with that of Hand of the Cause of God Mr. Enoch Olinga, who was there for the official opening of the country's National Baha’i Center. George had the honor of serving as Mr. Olinga's interpreter at the "inauguration" and subsequently at a large youth conference in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. In all, he spent six weeks in Africa and then traveled on to Paris, Namur (Belgium), Luxembourg and Switzerland, attending Baha’i conferences or other events in each place and interpreting as needed.

The other factor driving his side trip to Europe was some continued abdominal discomfort which had him contemplating a hospital stay in Ouagadougou. When he felt well enough in Europe, he returned to Africa for a time.

After returning from his international teaching trip, George returned to Georgia and resumed his studies at Life Chiropractic College. He was granted his Doctor of Chiropractic degree in 1980 after again taking some time off to marry Providencia Morillo and to help out at home after Amelia's birth in 1978. In addition to obtaining a license to practice in the state of Georgia, he also earned a license in Quebec, which turned out never to be used.

Throughout his life he continued to take courses in different healing techniques and energy modalities such as Visceral Manipulation, Manual Lymph Drainage and BodyTalk. After he and his new wife, Sharon Marie Allen, moved to Washington, Georgia, he opened a chiropractic office at a central but not very visible location downtown. It was during this Washington stay that Solange was born. He met his third wife, Gail A. Anthony, around 1997 when he was looking for someone experienced in Lymphatic Therapy to practice with. Once Gail agreed to work with him, he began coming to her office in Roswell and they eventually worked together as colleagues. He found that he preferred the gentle work of lymphatics and Visceral Manipulation and honed his skill as an intuitive healer. Gail introduced him to BodyTalk though a friend of hers. Once he saw the efficacy of this therapy, he started taking classes to learn it and use it in his practice. While working together over a period of three years, George and Gail became good friends. When they discovered that they had fallen in love with each other, they were a little nervous about doing anything that would damage their friendship. Eventually, love won out and they were married in Roswell, Georgia on September 23, 2001. He moved into her house in Woodstock, Georgia and eventually closed his Washington practice.

George married his first wife, Providencia Maria Morillo in East Lyme, CT at the end of 1977. He and Provi moved to Haiti and became international pioneers for their faith. They lived there from 1980-1983, mostly in a newly constructed house for most of that time they had no telephone service. While there, he did the first Spanish-to-French translations of some of the first booklets published by the Ruhi Institute. While back in the States, he also edited two or three books for the Baha’i author and Auxiliary Board Member Nathan Rutstein. He recently tried to determine which ones they were without success.

While splitting his time between Woodstock and Washington, George continued his studies in lymphatic therapy with French physician Bruno Chikly. They became good friends and when Bruno wrote his major work on lymphology and lymphatic therapy, Silent Waves, he asked George to edit it for him. The book was the most complete book ever written about all aspects of the lymphatic system. This was a very big project and for a long time it was unclear how much work remained to be done. Nearly every sentence needed to be rewritten. Fortunately the author was very receptive to George's suggestions. George also edited two books by Nathan Rutstein.

George became a founding member of the first Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Woodstock, GA, as he had been with the LSAs of Marietta and Smyrna and of Ledyard,CT. After he and Gail moved to Athens in 2004, he was elected to the LSA of Athens (which had been around for several years) and served with few interruptions until 2020. During most of those years he served as a secretary and once as chair, but that didn't seem to be as good a fit. He was also appointed an Assistant to Auxiliary Board Member Riaz Khadem and served briefly in that capacity. At some point (he forgets the year) he became a member of the Campus Ministry Association at the University of Georgia, where Sohayl Moshtael was already a member of quite long standing. Later, he was invited to also join the newly-formed Interfaith Clergy Fellowship of Greater Athens, with Sohayl also serving as at "CMA." He particularly loved that group and felt that it performed a great service in connecting committed people of a large diversity of faiths. He continued as a member and in 2021 took a class sponsored by the Clinton Foundation that taught clergy about drug addiction and how the clergy can help their congregations become better informed and better able to help prevent addiction and overdosing.

He also supported efforts to help patients and families suffering from sickle cell disease. He worked with the late Kimberly Syphrett of Connecticut (a spiritual daughter of his) to help improve understanding of the condition and to become aware of local resources. The main result of the work was quite a good booklet. The main downside was how much it focused on New England.

Over the years, George attended many Baha’i conferences. During their lives together, he and Gail attended the annual Social and Economic Development Conference in Orlando, Florida and the Zia Bagdadi Conference in Augusta, GA on numerous occasions.

Over the years, he attended and eventually taught Ruhi classes in Athens. During the summer of 2021, he started a Zoom group for the study of God Passes By.

George leaves behind his wife, Gail; and four children, among others. Three are children of his first wife, Providencia Morillo: Michael W. Morgan, Amelia T. Lord, and Juliette K. Lord. Solange E. Lord is his youngest surviving child and is the daughter of Sharon Allen. He leaves one son-in-law, Nabil Naderi, husband of Juliette; one stepson, Colin O. Berry, son of Gail Lord; a sister, Pauline Lord; her husband David Harlow; a brother, Henry duP. Lord; and grandchildren: Pele X. Lord Naderi and Maxwell C. Lord Naderi (Juliette and Nabil) and Nikky Lord Parsons (Amelia); Brooke Lee Berry and Brendan M. Berry (Colin and Ann Berry).

George was kind and generous and helped many people either with a free healing session or a helping hand providing rides and meals for those who needed them. A major focus of his attentions was Justice and he always went out of his way to help those in need. He was devoted to and worked in service for the Baha’i Faith until his last day.

It is with deep personal sorrow but joy in knowing his new condition that we say farewell.

A memorial service will be held at Bernstein Funeral Home, 3195 Atlanta Hwy., in Athens, Georgia, at 10:00 a.m., on Sunday, July 9, 2023. The service will be live-streamed at Facebook.com/BernsteinFuneral.

Bernstein Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.