March 2, 2027: General Meeting & Luncheon featuring Dean Julia M. Ritter

MARIBETH ARMSTRONG BORTHWICK
Attorney and Active Volunteer

Maribeth graduated from USC in 1973, summa cum laude and member of Phi Beta Kappa. Maribeth was a Town & Gown scholar in her years at USC and remembers enjoying meeting the members at their annual lunches on campus. She graduated from UCLA Law School in 1976 and pursued a career as a Real Estate and Finance attorney at Loeb & Loeb for over 20 years. Maribeth has been active in the Los Angeles community and has served, among other organizations, as a trustee of the Good Samaritan Hospital, the Marlborough School, the I.N. and Susanna Van Nuys Foundation and, since 2002, as the Vice Regent for California for the Mount Vernon Ladies Association. Maribeth is passionate about not just preserving Mount Vernon as a symbol of America’s birth but also in reaching out to students and faculty so they learn our country’s history and its founding principles.

Mount Vernon is the historic Virginia estate and home of George Washington, located on the Potomac River near Alexandria. As the most visited historic home in the U.S. (opened in 1860), it features an 18th-century Georgian mansion, gardens, a museum, a tomb, and a working farm/distillery. The Washington family acquired land in the area in 1674. Around 1734, the family embarked on an expansion of its estate that continued under George Washington, who began leasing the estate in 1754 before becoming its sole owner in 1761. The mansion was built of wood in a loose Palladian style; the original house was built in about 1734 by George Washington’s father, Augustine Washington. George Washington expanded the house twice, once in the late 1750s and again in the 1770s. It remained Washington’s home for the rest of his life.

After Washington’s death in 1799, the estate progressively declined under the ownership of several successive generations of the Washington family. In 1858, the house’s historical importance was recognized and was taken over by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, along with part of the Washington property estate. The mansion and its surrounding buildings escaped damage from the American Civil War, which damaged many properties in the Confederate States of America during the Civil War.

Mount Vernon was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is still owned and maintained in trust by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, being open to the public daily.