I Become a Francophole

My Father Is Kissed By A Frenchman While The Bishop Watches
And I Become a Francophile

At the end of the Second World War, General DeGaulle, who had led the Résistance to the Nazi occupation of France, was excluded as an equal from the peace talks. My father, president of what was then Southwestern Louisiana Institute (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette), was a great admirer of DeGaulle. He thought the exclusion unjust and wrote a letter about it to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. The letter must have been eloquent and persuasive because it was picked up and published by papers across the country, and eventually was read into the Congressional Record. It also must have been noticed in France, because, much to my father’s surprise, when the first French honors were awarded after the war, his name was on the list to become a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.

La Légion d’honneur, France’s highest decoration, was created by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802 and first bestowed in 1804. It is awarded for gallantry in military action or for distinguished service in the military, and in civilian life “for work that enhances the reputation of France through scholarship, arts, sciences, politics, etc.” It can be awarded to nationals of countries other than France, and among the many Americans who have been given the honor are, to name but a few, John Singer Sargent, Julia Child, Jerry Lewis, and Neil Armstrong.

Dr. Hosea Phillips, a professor of French at Southwestern, volunteered to instruct my father in the protocol surrounding the ceremony. “ Philippe,” as he was known, had studied at the Sorbonne and had a reputation on the campus for flamboyance, excitability, and unpredictability. He excelled at getting his students’ attention. Once while teaching in a second-floor classroom in Mouton Hall, he told a student that if she made one more mistake while reading aloud, he would jump out the window. She soon grievously mispronounced a word. Philippe ran and leaped, as he said he would, out the window. There was a collective gasp from the class and all rushed over to look for the body on the lawn two stories below. What they saw was Philippe crouching just beneath the window on a wide ledge that only he realized was there.

The French Consul in New Orleans was to drive over to make the presentation to my father. Philippe, describing the ceremony that was to take place, told my father that after the Consul pinned the medal on his lapel, he would then kiss him on both cheeks. This prospect so horrified my father that he later said he seriously considered turning down the honor if it meant he had to be kissed by a Frenchman. I don’t know how Philippe persuaded him that this was an established and acceptable tradition among men in France, and therefore had to be endured. In northern Louisiana, where my father came from, it most certainly was not, was probably considered a felony.

The photograph of the ceremony shows, left to right, Philippe; Claude Colomb, who was then the mayor of Lafayette; my father stoically awaiting the buss, resolutely not making eye contact with the Consul, Lionel Vasse, who is gripping both his shoulders; a military man I do not recognize; Lafayette’s Bishop Jules Jeanmard; and, keeping his distance from the others, Dr. Roberts of the foreign language faculty at Southwestern.

It was not clear to my ten-year-old mind why my father had been decorated. I thought it had something to do with his fighting the Nazis, though I was not sure exactly where he had done this, or how he had found the time to do so in his busy life of faculty meetings, state board meetings, and other administrative duties. I must have got the idea from a war movie about the O.S.S. which had made a great impression on me. And at times the war had seemed very close to Lafayette. There had been reports of U-boats in the Gulf of Mexico, and when KVOL broadcast the news that Abbeville in France had fallen to the Germans, panic swept through southwest Louisiana. Many assumed that the Abbeville in question was the town twenty miles from Lafayette where we often went to eat raw oysters. In any case, since my father was the most important and powerful person I knew, the idea that he somehow had killed a few Nazis did not seem unreasonable.

In July of 1946, I went with my father to the Bastille Day celebration in New Orleans. Our party included M’sieur Perot, a Frenchman who taught French at Southwestern. M’sieur Perot had been giving me private lessons in conversational French, and for the occasion he had taught me the words to La Marseillaise.

We left Lafayette long before dawn and arrived at St. Louis Cathedral in time for an early morning mass. The French aircraft carrier, Bearn, which had fought with the Free French during the war, was in New Orleans, and the cathedral was filled with sailors wearing their white hats with a little red pom-pom.

When the mass was over, we went to a reception at the French Consul’s residence in the Garden District where I was very taken by the marzipan made in the shape of apples, oranges, bananas, and bunches of grapes. We then went to tour the Bearn. On the bridge the captain pointed out in the glass windshield the bullet holes made by Nazi strafing.

After the visit to the Bearn, there was a sumptuous lunch in the banquet room at La Louisiane, a prominent restaurant on Iberville Street in the French Quarter. Because this was the first Bastille Day after the terrible war, it was a very emotional event. We were seated at the head table, facing a sea of sailors. Heartfelt toasts were made with pink champagne (though my glass had only ginger ale), and I stood on a chair to join in the singing of the French national anthem. All the sailors rose to sing, tears streaming down their cheeks. Spurred on by the intensity of feeling in the room, and the sight of so many grown men weeping, tears were soon streaming down my cheeks, as well.

From that day on, I have always loved France.

Before he was awarded the Légion d’honneur, my father received a lesser honor, the Reconnaissance Française, a bronze medal given in recognition of his work in setting up student exchanges between France and the United States. The first French exchange student who came to Lafayette was the daughter of an admiral from Bordeaux and, to my eyes, very glamorous. She looked a lot like the actress Danielle Darrieux. I remember her vividly because several times she was my babysitter, and I was enthralled. Years later Philippe went to Bordeaux and looked her up. He returned to report (could he be believed?) that she had become the madame of the most exclusive bordello in Bordeaux.

In 1960 or thereabouts, I saw my father’s hero, DeGaulle, at a reception at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, a three-quarter-scale adaptation of the 18th-century Palais de la Légion d’Honneur in Paris. What I remember most about the occasion is that DeGaulle and I were the two tallest people in the room. We nodded to each other over the heads of the shorter Frenchmen who all seemed to be shoving and pushing to get closer to le Général.

That evening, with a group of French friends, I watched on television the dinner that was given in DeGaulle’s honor. He obviously was fatigued and during long speeches by Governor Brown of California and Mayor Christopher of San Francisco, he kept dozing off. Each time he did, his wife, Yvonne, leaned over the person sitting between them and goosed him awake. Finally, it was his turn to speak. He rose majestically, raised his arms in the air, and proclaimed: “Vive Chicago!” The translator quickly translated. “The General has just said “Long Live San Francisco!” ”