The Villa St. Jean blog project

From an interview published in the autumn issue of the University of Dayton's magazine. (it's here)

The headline:
Jean Remy first met Americans, U.S. soldiers pushing through eastern France, during World War II.
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“My first words in English were ‘chewing gum, please,’” says Remy, a Châlons-en-Champagne native who attended UD’s business school on a Fulbright in 1958-59.
Remy attended Villa St. Jean, a Marianist school in Switzerland, but his grandparents already had another Dayton connection: They had housed a Dayton-based officer during World War I. When Remy reached Dayton after a grueling trip from Paris, that officer, Harold Robinson, “bought me a banana split I’ll never forget.”
In Dayton, Remy discovered multiple-choice tests, drive-in cinemas and Protestant churches. Catholic students had to attend Mass on Wednesdays, he says. “I sinned. The Dayton newspaper had a two-page listing of church services, and I was curious.”
The Founders Hall resident saw more than just Dayton. He traveled by Greyhound to Mexico and throughout the U.S., including the segregated South.
At UD, he participated in vision tests for NASA. America had a technological edge on France, he says. But “what amazed me was that a 50-year-old building was already ‘too old.’”
Remy left Dayton when he was drafted for the war in Algeria. He served there 28 months.
He worked 27 years at Citibank in private banking and as a manager in international corporate banking and human resources.
He traveled to Africa and the Middle East as a vice president in institutional banking. He later consulted for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Africa.
Remy met Bernadette Antoine at a young professionals’ prayer group in Montmartre. They married in 1971 and honeymooned in Israel. They have a son, two daughters and two grandchildren.
Today, Remy produces jam and cider at his 16th-century home in Villeray, a two-hour drive west of his Parisian
winter home, and rents his country bed-and-breakfast (remyfami@gmail.com, if you’re in the neighborhood.
looking for a place to stay).
He reveals his age, 72, but adds, “My Wii age is 51.”
— Mary Harvan Gorgette

The tireless Jean Remy passes along the latest information from the Continent regarding Antoine Saint-Exupéry.
First, he notes that a French TV magazine show, earlier this month,  devoted a story to the disappearance off the coast of Marseilles and the discovery of the wreck of his plane.
Secondly, he points out this site -- http://www.lepetitprince.com/ -- which he notes is controlled by St.-Ex's estate and, no doubt, is financially beneficial to them.
(From the website: our website is an initiative of the Succession Antoine de Saint-Exupéry estate represented by Olivier d’Agay, great-nephew of Saint-Exupéry, and of the Le Petit Prince Multimédia company.
Informations : info@lepetitprince.com)

Our colleagues send along news of two reports published by the St-Irenaeus Centre in Lyon on Saint-Exupéry.

One story, we're told, describes the creation of a Saint-Exupéry Foundation for youth. Another describes the decision to create, after long negotiations, a museum at the commune of Saint-Maurice-de-Rémens near Ambérieu Castle where Saint-Ex vacationed during his youth.

Mr. Lawler, class of 1968 at the Villa, returned yet again to the Alps this year to race the Gore-Tex Transalpine Run, for reasons not entirely clear to us.

He was accompanied this time by son Patrick, 23; his support crew was wife Anne and brother Kevin.

A description of the event: The GORE-TEX® Transalpine-Run is an 8 day/ 8 stage race across the Alps, from the Northern Alps of Germany, via the Central Alps of Austria and Switzerland, to the Southern Alps of Italy.  For 2009, the course length is approximately 147 miles with 48,000 feet of elevation gain over 8 days. Each day, the participants ascend and descend one range of the Alps.

More information on Brian's run is available here.

In his Clark Kent mode, Lawler works as an attorney in Seattle. He's completed the race several times and our office has awarded him the VSJ Alumni Distance-Runner Lifetime Achievement Award.
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All:

Our esteemed French breathren met earlier this month in Fougerolles. Via post and routed through China, we have come across some pictures showing both our brothers and -- apparently -- many wine bottles.
 (The photographer, we believe, are supplied by our field journalists, Jean Remy and François Buzon)
An addition: Our correspondent on the continent, Jean Remy, pointed us toward a treasure-trove of additional photos here: http://www.neufgiga.com/n/50-17/share/LNK20874a77d1b657b32/.
Merci, Jean!

All:
Our photography team is still catching up the treasure of pictures and old yearbooks sent to our offices by our esteemed alumni.
Here is a recent photo of Gallia, the only surviving structure of our old school. Our correspondents -- among them are Jean Remy, Michel Inoue and Franois Ronsin -- report that this is from September 2007.
Mr. Ronsin maintains a place on Vox, by the way, here.

-- the editors.

Our photo desk is still going over the vast library of material released by François Marchal (see this post).

We thought we'd pass along a couple more excerpts, these from the 1959-60 yearbook, a half-century ago, and the twilight period of the Villa as a French-language school. (By the by, clicking through on the images will get you to an original-size picture with better detail.)

One is struck by the humor suggested in the skiing shots and the fact that VSJ basketball pre-dated the Americanization of the school. The long-held belief that Villa basketball reached its apex a decade later, with the likes of Stephen McClintic, Tom Booth, Mike Litton (all '68) and Anson Dorrance ('69) must now be revisited.

-- the editors

 

 

 

François Marchal, one of our esteemed senior alumni from the Villa's French days, has taken the trouble to scan and preserve some VSJ yearbooks from the late 1940s to 1960-61.
It's a stagering amount of work that adds, significantly, to the school's history.
The collection can be found, in PDF format, here.

Two very modest sample are reproduced here.

 

 

One of our esteemed older brothers sent us notice of an academic gathering  in late June in Paris organized to study and celebrate the life of Antoine Saint-Exupéry.

As our weekend staff never studied French (but German) in Fribourg, we have utilized a translation service to give you this sense of the event.

 

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Retreat, testimony and exchange of social, educational, solidarity, cultural and literary an international of people who inspired and refer community in the work and the life of  Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

These meetings aim to bring together the driving part of the international community devoted to "Antoine de Saint-Exupéry," which will also enable us to help measure his work and a life that still serves as reference.

Round tables will offer a better understanding of the latest news from the scope and diversity of the actions of each in its various sectors of activity. Through conferences and cultural events, we will be rediscover the thinking and Saint-Exupéry commitments beyond these practical experiences.

Over these three days, you'll meet some 250 people from all continents in an intense time-sharing to enrich the community.

The great closing evening, Monday 29 June 2009, marks the anniversary of the birth of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and it will officially launch the Youth Foundation Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, with more than 650 guests in the great nave of the Bernardins College.

What are the odds on this one?

 One of our junior editors, Thomas Brew, reports that he was jogging with his wife, Dawn, on the streets of Kihei, Maui, when he spotted his fellow '69 alumni Mike D'Annunzio.
To be fair, Brew was aware that D'Annunzio owned a vacation condo in Maui, but he hadn't seen Mike in a few years and had no inkling he was on the island.
(Brew is an editor at msnbc.com and lives in a suburb east of Seattle, near the Microsoft campus. D'Annunzio and his wife, Vicki, live in Seattle's Capitol Hill area.  Mike works at Boeing; Vicki's a yoga instructor. Both Mike and Tom have two children; Mike's are older.)
Years ago, Brew and D'Annunzio were Bossuet skiing partners. They were not necessairly noted for their skills ... but noted nonetheless..
Tom and Mike met later in the day, as the D'Annunzios were set to leave the island the next day.
 Over a beer, they caught up on recent events and ruminated about the prospects for electrical cars. They discovered that both couples have taken up tennis in their advancing years.
And they wondered, too, about the odds on two Villa alumni running into one another, randomly, on a street in Hawaii 40 years and a month after leaving Fribourg..