Widow Regrets Giving LaRouche Money : Politics: His disciples impressed Helen Overington, 82, as ‘bright and enthusiastic.’ In a matter of months, she had given them $741,000.

Helen Overington reared her five children in rummage sale clothing because her husband “didn’t want to spoil them.” He was the kind of man, his daughters recall, who would rather risk falling downstairs in the dark than waste a watt of electricity and always looked as if his tie “held the shirt on his back.”

From the way he spent money on just two things, private schooling for the children and antiques for himself, they suspected there was plenty of it. But they were astonished when he died in 1970 and left his wife more than a million dollars.

They were more astonished when they discovered in March that over the last year, their mother--so generous with her time and frugal with her money--had given more than $741,000, most of the remaining principal, to political extremist Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr.

By the time her children caught on, she could no longer afford health insurance or her Baltimore apartment. She now lives with one of her daughters in Waynesboro, Pa.

At 82, Overington is firm of handshake, sharp of mind and deeply chagrined. Like others before her, she can scarcely believe she gave so much money to an organization that sees communism, “the drug lobby” and the banking industry linked in a conspiracy to destroy LaRouche, the world’s economy and the human race.

LaRouche, a three-time presidential candidate, is serving a 15-year term in federal prison for mail fraud and tax evasion. Six of his associates were convicted of related federal charges.

Four LaRouche associates have been convicted in Virginia courts of fraudulent fund-raising, often from elderly women who testified that they depleted their savings to lend the group money and were not repaid. Another associate is on trial in that case, which arose from a 1987 raid on LaRouche’s headquarters in Leesburg, and 11 more are awaiting trial.

But the group has not--as state and local officials hoped after the raid--gone away. LaRouche’s followers maintain financial and legal offices in Leesburg and run a publishing operation in eastern Loudoun.

Meanwhile, LaRouche is running for Congress from his cell, Loudoun resident Nancy Spannaus is running for the Senate under his banner, and his followers, according to Overington and others, continue their aggressive fund-raising tactics.

Overington says the LaRouche disciples who began calling and coming to see her regularly last spring were “attractive people, bright and enthusiastic people. They wanted to hear about my grandchildren. They were interested in my ideas”--sharing her enthusiasm for President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, for instance--”which my children didn’t want to hear.”

She said she grew particularly fond of Rochelle Ascher, who first visited the apartment April 8, 1989--three days after she was convicted in Leesburg of soliciting loans for LaRouche knowing that they would not be repaid.

In dozens of visits and phone calls between January and February, 1989, according to a calendar compiled by Overington and her children, LaRouche associates asked for contributions to pay for newspaper ads, leaflets, food for Eastern Europe and Ascher’s lawyer.

Time after time, Overington’s bank records show, she wrote a check--in amounts ranging from $250 to $40,000--or allowed them to drive her to her safe-deposit box for stock certificates to sell. She said her visitors often carried calculators and the stock page so they would know exactly how much they would get.

“I know, it just seems incredible,” she said. “Rochelle always had a project . . . that had to be done right away.” Overington is also liable for capital gains taxes on the stock sales.

She said she began to feel increasingly pressured, sometimes writing a check after several hours so they would leave her house. In early February, she told Ascher she no longer had enough money to cover her personal expenses for the rest of her life.

“She said, ‘I’ll promise not to ask for any more if you give me this,’ ” said Overington, who gave her a final $80,000. “I said you don’t have to promise because you know I don’t have any more.”

LaRouche’s followers, including Ascher in testimony at her trial, say they solicit only from people who express sympathy for their politics and give willingly.

Ascher, the first LaRouche associate to be tried after the Leesburg raid, has been free on bond while she appeals the verdict. Recently the state Attorney General’s Office moved to have her bond revoked or restricted, alleging that she has been soliciting contributions--not loans--using “misrepresentation and undue pressure.”

Assistant Atty. Gen. John B. Russell Jr. said he has been in touch with Overington, but his bond motion does not refer to her or any other contributors by name. “I’m aware of more than one case,” he said.

Ascher’s attorney, John P. Flannery II, said the terms of Ascher’s bond required her only to stay in Maryland and Virginia and to maintain “good behavior. . . . No one has told me to this day that Shelly Ascher did anything wrong. As far as I know, whatever (Overington) gave, she gave voluntarily.”

Overington and her family say her free will was subverted by people who pretended to care about her--sending birthday cards, bringing groceries when she was sick--until they had every dime.

They are telling the story, they say, because they don’t want it to happen to anyone else’s mother, or anyone else’s children. Her daughters acknowledge they had hoped their father’s unexpected wealth would ensure their financial security. But they say they are more confounded that strangers almost destroyed the values and relationships of a lifetime.

Helen Bessley, of Baltimore, was a 35-year-old biology teacher when she was courted by Bruce Overington of Laurel, Md., a 50-year-old ornithologist. She wasn’t sure what he had in mind when he invited her to his ranch in California. “I said, ‘I wouldn’t go with you unless I was married to you. Is this a proposal?’ He said, ‘You can take it that way if you like.’ ”

In the next six years, she filled the house in Lakeport, Calif., with four daughters and a son, who say they grew up happily, mostly outdoors and barefoot--the girls sleeping in bunk beds in one room and the boy sleeping on a sofa in the living room.

The family returned to the East Coast in 1956 when it was time to find a private high school for their oldest daughter. Bruce Overington traveled ahead to choose a new hometown, eventually walking from Gettysburg to Waynesboro, staying at the YMCA and pulling $20,000 cash from one of his daughter’s discarded wallets to pay for a house.

Peggy Overington Weller, then 9, remembers going often to a nearby orchard to pick cherries at 35 cents a bucket--confusing her new friends who didn’t understand why the Overington children went to private schools but wore funny clothes and did menial jobs. “We lived on hot dogs and canned peaches because he didn’t believe in spending money on food,” Weller said.

Helen Overington managed to sneak a few indulgences past Bruce, ordering their first telephone without asking him. When he died, she redecorated the house and traveled, but she continued to live simply “because it was sort of a habit,” she said.

She sold the house to Peggy and Don Weller, took an apartment in Baltimore and divided most of her time among her children’s families, presiding over pregnancies, illnesses, birthdays and ballgames. She lived on her interest income and donated much of it to more than 200 mostly conservative charities and causes.

Weller, who typed up the list of donations at tax time each year, said she was amused to see that she and her mother often contributed to opposing groups and causes. “But I kept my mouth shut,” she said--until her mother began talking about LaRouche last spring and skipping family events to spend time with his followers at rallies and meetings.

Weller says she finally asked her mother whether she was giving money to the group, and “she told me it was none of my business. That was something Mom would never say.”

In an agonized letter to her mother in October, Weller warned, “You have allowed yourself to get involved in a political organization that has the reputation for persuasive tactics and secretive methods that get people separated from their families (and their money).”

She didn’t know how involved until last March, when her sister Mary Rotz saw a piece of paper on which her mother had toted up $407,000 in donations to LaRouche in 1989. “I said that comma couldn’t be there,” Rotz recalled.