Shawn,
Thanks much for your help and my apologies for the belatedness of that thanks...
Anyway - just an update - the SSLRequireSSL directive didn't work in .htaccess with openssl either - HOWEVER - it worked fine in the httpd.conf (which is preferred anyway). Finally, just for kicks, I tired the directive in httpd.conf with shared ssl... as you probably guessed, no dice.
Anyway, open-ssl did the trick!
Thanks again,
Larry