August 7. On this date in 1908, Mildred Mottahedeh was born in Seabright, New Jersey.

August 7. On this date in 1908, Mildred Mottahedeh was born in Seabright, New Jersey.

On June 15, 1997, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel featured an article about Mildred Root Mottahedeh who was a member of the International Bahá'í Council and the first representative of the Bahá'í International Community to the United Nations. She made a substantial fortune from her luxury porcelain business.

The article notes...

For the last five years, she has served as a consultant to Mottahedeh & Co., having sold it to fellow Baha'is Grant and Wendy Kvalheim.

Now, she's retiring in order to focus full-time on the Mottahedeh Foundation, which has founded and sponsored projects in Uganda, Zaire, India and Micronesia.

Founded in 1958, the foundation is an extension of philanthropic work that she and her husband started in 1929, when they began their 49-year marriage. Living in an apartment in Greenwich Village, they were better off than many, she said.

"We felt so sorry for all the poor kids, all the starving people. We felt a sense of obligation."

Once a month, they rented a double-decker bus, filled it with children, drove to clothing and candy wholesalers,dressed and treated the kids, then took them to the Baha'i Center for a meal.

Baha'i was founded in the mid-19th century in Iran. Its main tenets are the unity of all religions and the unity of humankind.