[2] He was among the pallbearers of Felix Huston Robertson, a war-criminal known for the Saltville Massacre of black soldiers and as the last surviving general of the Confederate States of America.
[3] During World War II Colonel Westbrook returned to active duty and was wartime president of the United States Purchasing Board in the South Pacific theater where he was awarded the Order of the British Empire from New Zealand.
[6] Westbrook, eventually the developer of the little-known Mutual Ownership Defense Housing Division – a program of cooperatively owned housing projects for middle-income residents funded by the US Government –[7] began his career late in the 1920s with his own self-initiated program for organizing rural Texas farmers into a cooperative marketing body.
Since it ties these families to their home during times of economic recession or depression, it makes it difficult for them to move and follow available employment opportunities.
[10] In 1934, Colonel Westbrook joined the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and by 1936 he was responsible within the WPA for managing a community in Pontiac, Michigan called West Acres.
As a federal government official, Westbrook would work in the area of public housing and President Roosevelt would also credit him with developing the administration's rural rehabilitation program.
Westbrook believed that eliminating the required downpayment for housing purchases would actually make the middle class a better risk for home ownership by simply allowing them to keep financial reserves that could carry them through difficult times.
In 1940, with the demand for defense housing growing steadily, Congressman Frederick Garland Lanham (D-Texas), chairman of the House Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, coordinated a meeting between Howard Hunter, Commissioner of Works Projects Administration, and Westbrook, to discuss the mutual home ownership concept with John Carmody, Administrator of the Federal Works Agency.
This was a time when public housing programs were being presented as model governmental projects that utilized internationally recognized architects and urban planners for their development and implementation.
The mutual ownership projects are an example of success in the early US public housing effort before conservative forces took control and promoted private solutions.
[18] During the 1950s Colonel Westbrook became an official of the Democratic National Committee and was dismissed on October 30, 1952 following charges of involvement in a kickback scheme regarding a United States Government contract for tungsten with Atlantica Companhia of Portugal for $9 million.