Word: baron
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Litigation dragged through the years, and the family struggled on. The old baron suffered a paralyzing stroke ten years ago; the baroness continued trying to manage the estate. Then a local merchant who had long sold grain and seed and rented farm machinery to the De Portals presented a bill for $14,000. The family charged that it was a fraud. Before the matter could be resolved, a judge ordered the estate sold at auction. Though it was worth an estimated $330,000, a farmer named Louis Rivière made the high bid of $88,000, and the outstanding...
...When Rivière tried to take over his property, the baroness met him at the door and threatened to kill him. Rivière filed charges against the baroness, who was sentenced to four months in jail. Rivière again tried to take over, but the young baron took a pot shot at him and warned him away. In late February Rivière got the police to accompany him to the chateau, but when they tried to enter, Marie-Agnés shouted: "Not another step. My brother is armed. We will fire on you and commit...
...siege began. Jean-Louis, by now 21, would let nobody approach the house except the mailman, the baker, a social worker and a doctor who came to treat the bedridden old baron. Two weeks ago the baron finally died, at 89, but the children refused to bury the body until their mother returned...
...authorities agreed to drop all charges against the baroness, and they even provided a coffin for her husband. Then new problems kept arising. Grave diggers who came to prepare the baron's final resting place were driven off by a swarm of bees...
Visionary that he was, Baron Pierre de Coubertin foresaw obstacles in pursuing his "grandiose and beneficent work," the founding of the modern Olympic Games. "I am disillusioned," he said, "with the secret war going on between the universities of America and the Amateur Athletic Union...