Where have the years gone? Back then, I was known as a famous goat cheese maker, who was also an architect . . . until historic preservation projects started winning awards.
Every one of my dear friends at the Smithsonian Institute and National Geo . . . who lived in prestigious neighborhoods, close to Downtown Washington, DC . . . began dying of cancer two years after this newscast. All passed away from cancer, much younger than they should have. First in was archaeologist Jean Stuart. Then it was attorney Jay Monahan, first husband of Katie Couric. Now there are very few people alive in the United States, who have been inside my house and were also eyewitnesses to a dream that is now gone with the wind. In fact, the only two people I can think of are journalists Katie Couric and Barbara Harrison, who did this newscast. BTW, Barbara has substantial Choctaw ancestry.
by Richard L. Thornton, Architect & City Planner
Officials from the US Dept. of Agriculture and State Dept. frequently brought prominent visitors from other nations to our farm, because the facility was obviously not a “hippie-dippy” operation like many early goat cheese operations in the United States. They used it as example how American technology and inventiveness were continuing to make the family farm a viable option in the United States.
This past winter, I received a LinkedIn message from a woman, who had grown up in a house that I designed near Winchester, VA. She was just a toddler, when her parents visited our farm and didn’t remember it. She had read most chapters of The Shenandoah Chronicles. It seemed like a novel to her, she said. These events seemed bigger than life, even surrealistic.
The two-story fireplace in the home where the woman grew up, supported the roof of the house.
However, her parents could verify two major plots within a story that seemed more akin to “Camelot.” They were at the 1990 Smithsonian Institute administrators Christmas Party and three years later in the Winchester Star newspaper.
They remembered an exotically beautiful woman entering the party with French Ambassador Jacques Andreani, wearing a full length sable coat then later exhibiting extreme PDA with me in the living room then later the two us slipping off to the guest quarters. They said that although I remember the scene in the living room as romantic, guests at the party saw events rapidly headed toward an X-rated status.
Her parents also remember the huge scandal when the FBI arrested so many prominent people in Shenandoah County in 1993 – Six out of seven members of the Board of Supervisors . . . all but one of the department heads and the top six administrators at the Sheriff’s Dept. The latter were charged with murder and dealing in illegal drugs.
In addition to up to 350 goats, the farm maintained a herd of Barbados Sheep
The NBC news program – Will the real wife please step up!
NBC contacted me about doing a program after the Washington Post published a photo of Vivi and I, serving cheese in the Senate Hearing Chamber in the Capitol in June 1991 for National Dairy Month. Vivi was wearing her former wedding ring and the traditional French dairy maid costume that she attired as Normandy’s Dairy Princess, so they assumed that she was my wife. Vivi was actually a professional actress and singer, living in Paris, so she would look “good” on national TV . . . but NBC didn’t know that part.
I didn’t know that they had seen Vivi at the Capitol. When the producer specifically asked for my wife to be in the program, I told her that she was a school teacher. NBC paid overtime, so its film crew could come on Saturday, when my wife was there. However, my official wife saw the event as an opportunity to be with the person, she preferred, since 1987, so left the farm early Saturday morning and did not return till late that night. After years of such things, I finally realized that my official wife stayed married to me as a cover for her “alternative lifestyle.”
Barbara Harrison and the film crew stayed on the farm most of the day, hoping that my wife would return. Of course, they all thought my wife was the former Normandy Dairy Princess. LOL They shot seven reels of videotape.
I really liked Barbara. She is just as nice a lady in person as she appears on TV. The brief newscast below by Barbara was merely a prequel to the nationally broadcast program in the winter of 1992. I never saw it because everyone at Channel 4 in Washington forgot to notify me. I rarely had time to watch TV. Probably, I was in the creamery making or wrapping cheese, when it aired.
It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t turn on the TV that night. Because my real wife never showed up for the filming, NBC obtained film from the staff at the National Capitol of Vivi and I touring the Capitol, holding hands. Then, while I was sampling cheese at the October 14, 1991 Gourmet Food Exposition at Union Station, they interviewed Vivi. The one-hour program included long interviews with Vivi and Julia Child chatting away in French about French wines and Virginia goat cheeses then Vivi was interviewed alone about how we fell in love and daily life on our farm. Much of her story was fictitious, but she WAS an actress . . . and, at that time, taking courses at the Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris.
I found out about the nationally broadcast program from letters and telephone calls by friends around the country. All were terribly impressed with my new French wife and said that the change was long overdue. Thus, began and ended my one hour of fame as the nation’s leading goatherd.
PS – Vivi and I were deeply in love and still adore each other. Things just didn’t work out as we planned.
Never let your French soulmate sneak off to do an interview with Julia Child!
The Americas Revealed 