Paris Under Fire – State of Emergency

Yesterday evening, we did not watch TV…
We woke this morning to the alarming headlines: Paris Under Fire, President Holland Declared State of Emergency. In the deadliest attack since WWII, over 120 people were slain simultaneously during terrorist attacks at 6 different locations in Paris. Like most people our first reaction was disbelief, then horror, then concern for the safety of our family and friends living in Paris.

We have personal ties to Paris, a place we called home for over a decade during the 80s. Our children were born in the City of Lights. Our French family members still reside there, as do old friends. Terrorists tarnished the image of gay Paris when they gunned down young and ordinary people on a leisurely Friday evening dining at local cafes, listening to a rock concert and watching a football match.

Stunned as we watched the newsreel unfold, I insisted, “Call him.”

One of my husband’s best friends and family live within a stone’s throw of the targeted local restaurants, Little Cambodian, La Belle Equipe, and Carillon and Casa Nostra cafés and the Bataclan, the celebrated concert hall where the greatest number of victims were methodically slaughtered among the 1500 spectators of an American rock band performance.

When our friend answered the phone, we both breathed a sigh of relief; his apartment was situated in the center of the deadliest attack on French soil.

“My wife and I have breakfast every weekend at the Bataclan cafe,” he told my husband.

During the night of terror, gunshots and sirens flared outside their apartment, a night of despair knowing their 3 daughters were out in town, unable to get home until early hours of the morning.

The attack was systematic and precisely executed. The greatest massacre occurred in the Marais, a trendy district in 11^th Arrondissement. It is traditionally a Jewish area: our friend is of Jewish descent. It might not be a coincidence that the Marais was targeted.

When the revelers tried to escape the concert hall out the back door into the alley, a man armed with a Kalashnikov was waiting to gun them down. Video footage shows other young people hanging for the windows in attempts to flee.

Within the hour other kamikazes attacked outside the Stade de Paris in St.Denis, a stadium packed with 80,000 football fans watching France against Germany. Luckily that assailants were unable to enter the arena or the death toll would be far worse.

Waves of sadness wash over us, making our hearts heavy and limbs weak. As in the aftermath of 9/11, we are reminded it no longer matters if it is an American trade center, a French concert hall, a Russian plane, or an Egyptian resort, all of us who value democracy including peaceful Muslims are at risk.

Our initial reaction of concern for the safety of our immediate family and friends offers no relief in knowing they are okay, instead a free-floating anxiety, unnerving impotence and imperceptible grief reigns.

A noxious fear permeates our souls. Our only certitude is knowing that regardless of our nationality, race or religion, we are all vulnerable in the age of terror. Though we may not be related by blood nor share the same language and culture, we are united by our respect for freedom and democracy.

Today our beautiful City of Lights is plunged in darkness. Liberty, equality, fraternity must prevail.

Paris Under Siege New Tactics of Terrorism

Within minutes of one of the worst terrorist attacks in Paris, I skimmed a French newspaper while on layover at Charles de Gaulle Airport, en route to my home in Switzerland.

While I enjoyed the freedom to travel between borders, AK-47 toting terrorists gunned down Charlie Hebdo journalists at an editorial planning session in the heart of Paris.

While France mourned, democracies around the world chanted, “I am Charlie” in solidarity. I know from my own family that the French love satire and the freedom of expression. Charlie Hebdo, born out of the student protests in 1968s, reflects the French tradition of ‘esprit critique’ (critical spirit) and a place where journalists can speak their minds.

Since 2006 Charlie Hebdo received terrorist threats for having published caricatures of Prophet Mohammed. Stephen Charbonnier, the editor in chief, one of 12 victims of the attack, was under police protection. But bodyguards and officers stationed outside the door, also slaughtered, offered little protection against terrorism.

Charlie Hebdo poked fun at all, including the Pope and Jesus Christ, as well as political class leaders including extreme right wing Marine Le Pen and other prominent personalities. Though it often ruffled feathers, it also provoked thought and symbolized the right for freedom of expression.

Charbonnier said his job was not to defend freedom of speech. “But without freedom of speech we are dead. We can’t live in a country without freedom of speech. I prefer to die than live like a rat

As an American living abroad, I will never forget the impact of 9/11; now January 7/15 stains my soul. Like 9/11, the attack sent ripples of anxiety and outrage across national borders, racial divides and among the traditional French Catholic as well as the 5 million Muslims across the nation.

As the story unfolded live on national TV, the horror escalated. Less than 24 hours later, police were shot on the street in another attack. While the public froze, the government mobilized 90,000 police officers to search for the two terrorists who fled taking refuge in a printing company in a village near Charles deGaulle Airport. Meanwhile the other gunman encamped in a kosher grocery store at the Porte de Vincennes and killed several hostages. Nearby students cowered in lockdown, shoppers hid in garages, homeowners were confined, the peripherique (highway circling Paris) shut down, the nation held its breath.

I waited and watched as experts explain a new era of terrorism, a terror that reigns within. French citizens target their own country in an attempt to disrupt and paralyze society with fear.

President Holland attempted to calm his nervous nation with powerful speeches defending human rights. In spite of the Franco- American differences, our fundamental ideologies remain the same. Liberty, Equality and Fraternity — the bedrock of French values – are also the pillars upon which America was built.

“Each and every American stands with you today,” President Obama said as he offered support to our oldest ally. “The universal belief in freedom of expression is something that can’t be silenced because of senseless violence.”

As an American writer married to a French printer, intellectual freedom has been part of my family’s foundation. My children, born and raised in Paris in early years, were educated in Geneva as global, international citizens.

Over this past winter holiday, feeling discouraged, I contemplated stopping my blog and quitting writing. Yet with a heavy heart, as we embark on a new year, I am compelled to put my pen to paper.

Today I mourn for mankind, for the vulnerability in each of us against the faceless enemy of terrorism that threatens our existence. Like so many people, I want to do something, anything, to stop the madness. Helpless and hopeless I wring my hands and scrawl until my fingers bleed.

I must write.

Because I can.

And I will!

Normandy 70th Anniversary of D-Day June 6, 1944-2014

Pointe du Hoc (Photo credit: Gérald Lechault)

I visited the Normandy landing beaches on a cold, rainy, miserable day, a day much like the stormy dawn when 200,000 Allied personnel debarked on D Day, June 6, l944. A fitting day for remembering the 10,000 Allied soldiers who died on the “longest day” of war.

Normandy Invasion, June 1944 U.S. Army Rangers...

June 1944 U.S. Army Rangers storm the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A half-century after the Rangers overtook the strategic German lookout at Pointe du Hoc, I stood on the steel reinforced bunkers and peered over 100-foot drop off above the English Channel. I could picture a 19-year-old American boy jumping out of a PT boat into icy waters illuminated by gunfire. I could imagine him staggering across the dunes dodging bullets, clawing at the red cliffs, crawling through the hedgerows, groping for life in a foreign land. He was one of ours. Disorientated in fields criss-crossed by trees and hedges, trying to maneuver tanks through stone villages, shooting at the shadows that could be his own comrades, he was an American soldier killing Germans who could have been friends in another time and generation.

Normany – fields through hedgerow (Photo credit: Gérald Lechault)

I am of another time and generation, an American with French-Normand spouse, and German friends. Knowing the fair-minded, kind-hearted, Europeans as I do now, I cannot fathom how such an atrocity could occur. The war-ravaged countryside is not the Normandy I know. On rainy days, Normandy’s landscape may offer a bleak reminder of her sad past, but on sunny ones the murky coastline, black sea, and gray fields are transformed into a tapestry of colors. The beauty and tranquility of Normandy today in a ray of sunshine could drive full-grown men to their knees in tears. I, too young to have understood the impact of WWII, get a lump in my throat every time I return to the land of my in-laws in northwestern France.

Today the sacrifices of the men of WWII, their silent testimonials of white crosses lining the hills above the famous beaches Utah, Gold, Juno, Sword and Omaha hold special meaning. My countrymen, laid to rest in my adopted country, saved my family.

If those soldiers were to land on the Normandy beaches this June, they’d be surprised. Parasols have replaced Rommel’s asparagus (spiked metal posts preventing ships from landing). The 400 miles of wide white sand and dramatic cliff line extending from Le Treport in the east to Mont St. Michel in the west, is strewn with half-naked, live bodies worshipping the sun and sea.

Millions of visitors follow the “circuit du débarquement” along the coast from Pegasus Bridge to Cherbourg stopping at every WWII historical spot and all eight museums. The one in Arromanches gives a general overview and explains how the artificial port was made. The Museum of the Battle of Normandy in Bayeux, containing ration tins, tattered letters, faded photographs, and other mementos of WWII foxholes, is the most affecting one.

Colleville American cemetery (Photo credit: Gérald Lechault)

In Upper Normandy, my late grand father-in-law, Marcel Elie, a Gendarme, used to welcome me to his home in Dieppe by greeting me at the door playing the American national anthem on his trumpet. He blew that same trumpet while riding his horse leading the Allied troops down the Champs Elysees celebrating the liberation of Paris on August 24, 1945.

Unknown soldier – Colleville American cemetery (Photo credit: Gérald Lechault)

His old heart never forgot. Now, even though my generation never knew the horrors of world war, I too, will remember. When I stood in front of a field of 10,000 stark, white crosses, I felt overwhelmed by a debt that I can never repay. I know the Unknown Soldier. He is my father, my brother, my countryman, who died so nobly, so that today I might live in peace in a land whose splendor offers its own thanks to the skies.

Rest in peace my comrade in arms. You have not died in vain. If my words could transcend time you would know that because of you Normandy today, like the true Normans, remains proud and gracious.

How Title IX Changed my Life

Celebrate the 41st anniversary of Title IX today.

First posted March 4, 2013 by Generation Fabulous, women writing about women’s issues, as part of the launch for their new site.

Illinois State University lead nation in promoting women’s sports

For the last fifty some years, I have been listening to people tell me NO!

I ain’t listening no more!

I grew up on the sideline begging to play ball like the boys. The first half of my life, I fought to be allowed on America’s playing fields. In 1972, when Title IX passed mandating equal opportunities for girls, I set the standard for the first girl’s basketball team in my high school. In 1978, I received the first athletic scholarship in Illinois to play basketball for Jill Hutchinson at Illinois State University. Jill, co-founder and first president of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association, was a pioneer, who helped raise women’s college basketball to its current level of popularity.

I co-founded the first girl’s summer basketball camp in the Sauk Valley Region of Northern Illinois, so other girls in my area wouldn’t have to go to a boy’s camp like I did.

In 1979, I was drafted into the first Women’s Professional Basketball League (WBL.) The general public pooh-poohed the notion and unfortunately the league folded due to lack of funds and interest

Then I was recruited to play overseas, but after a year in Paris, non-European women were banned from the professional French league.

So I crossed the border and found my dream team in Marburg Germany.

Kabooom!

A car accident in France ended my career. Instantly.

I started over. Again. But first I had to learn to walk. Eventually, I taught at international high schools and coached girl’s and sometimes boy’s basketball teams. But what I really coveted was a writing career. In my free time, I wrote a newspaper column, and sports, and travel pieces, but traditional papers were dying. I should know. I married a French printer. He suggested that I start a blog.

Decades ago, I wrote my first book and signed with a big name agent, but publishers said that no one was interested in women’s basketball. Another half a dozen years passed, I worked up my courage, wrote another book and finally landed another high-flying agent. Once again, publishers said no thanks; I was not a not big enough name. Undaunted, I wrote yet another draft, interested a third agent, but it was still no go.

I felt like a loser. I moped. I swore. I cried. I kicked the wall. Then I picked up the pen again.

I do not take no for answer.

Damn it! You want something done, do it yourself!

Persistence pays off. A decade later, after another couple dozen drafts, I present to you, Home Sweet Hardwood: A Title IX Trailblazer Breaks Barriers Through Basketball.

Illinois State University – 1978

With a firsthand account of the monumental Title IX ruling, my book serves as an inspiring lesson in women’s history, but it is more than just a sports story. From expatriate life to cross cultural marriage to motherhood, Home Sweet Hardwood touches on the transitions every woman makes as she bridges the gaps between genders, generations and cultures.

Now you tell me, where would I be now if I gave up a half century ago when the powers that be, said, No!

Father’s Day Accolades to an Inaugural Title IX Dad

back in the day !

“No daughter of mine will wear trousers to church,” you scolded.

“Why not? God doesn’t care what we wear. It’s the inside that counts.”

To your chagrin, I became the first girl to wear pants to Sunday service. Though not always in agreement with my actions, when I became one of the first women’s professional basketball players, you beamed. At a time when basketball was for boys only, you taught me a jump shot in the driveway, while the neighbors shook their heads and chuckled.

While I invented my own fashion, developed my own career and became my own person, you stood by watching, alternately arguing and applauding, always trying to understand.

No textbook taught how to be super dad in the 70s, so you stumbled along changing to fit the times. You would never meet all the prerequisites for perfect parenting, but you were the best dad you could be for me.

Jim & two of his daughters

When tomboy was a dirty word and girls were relegated to the sideline, we never dreamed women would one day star in their own Showtime. Nor could we imagine that you would coach the first girls’ high school basketball championship team (1977) and I would receive the first athletic scholarship in Illinois (1978). When other dads insisted their daughters play dolls, you encouraged my athleticism. Every time you played catch with your son, you’d throw the baseball to me too, so I felt equal to my brother. You taught me how to hang on to a football so expertly, I’d have been a wide receiver had I been a boy. While society insisted sports were harmful for females, you encouraged me to play ball. During the infancy of Title IX, together we fought a steady battle for girls’ sports.

Later, when women’s teams developed and my slender frame took a beating on basketball courts where the game increased in contact and competitiveness, you never said, “You’re too small to go pro.” Instead you helped develop my potential. When my American pro team folded, I stated, “I’m going to France to play.”

“What if you get hurt? What if you don’t like it there?” You tried your darndest to dissuade me. Then after the shock subsided, you offered your support and returned to the gym to rebound.

When I announced, “I’m engaged to a Frenchman,” you were the first to accept a foreigner into the family. Decades later, you remained my most faithful correspondent, sending manila envelopes to Europe filled with local news, national sports and fatherly love.

I grew up during an era when athletic girls had no role models. When others teased, “Hey, jock,” I cringed, but never lost my self-esteem. You never loved me less because I grew up in skinned knees instead of nylons. You encouraged me to be myself even when it meant being different and pursuing a career usually sought by men.

Part of my fight for independence meant defying authority. When I snuck in late one night, you heard the garage door creak and met me at the door in your underwear.

“Young lady, do you know what time it is?” you grumbled.

“No, do you?” I snapped back. “At college, you don’t even know if I come home at night.”

When I was 26, before the wedding, I announced, “You’re going to be a grandpa.” You looked at me astounded and said, “Well, you always did things your own way.”

And the day your first grandchild was born in Paris, you wore a French beret to the school where you had taught for 25 years.

Jim with granddaughter Nat

It is not easy being a modern day daughter, marrying a Frenchman and raising a child abroad. Nor is it easy to be an up-to-date dad, whose dedicated coaching developed the talent that took his daughter away.

I was a selfish, smart-aleck kid, too big for my britches; you were too overprotective. Still, we loved each other, in spite of our imperfections. You grew up under the “work ethic” when it was a man’s world, only, yet you learned to accept a modern, do-it-herself daughter who lived by the “experience ethic.” You lean a bit to the right; I towards the left. Often times we were too much alike in temperament and too different in ideologies to get along, yet our differences, like thorns in our sides, spurred growth. I loved you enough to let you be a blundering father. You let me be a belligerent daughter. Through our headstrong outbursts, we learned to compromise, to live modern dreams without losing old-fashioned values.

You were not a perfect dad, nor I, a perfect daughter. But our love was…and always will be.

Congratulations – Son’s Graduation from Macalester College

Four years ago, I said goodbye to my son and started a blog. While that young man graduates with honors from Macalester in St. Paul, Minnesota, I am still here in Geneva, Switzerland telling stories. Though I won’t be present for the ceremony, words keep me connected.

Decades ago, the happiest and scariest moment of my life was when a doctor announced, “Congratulations it’s a boy!” From Nic’s treacherous toddlerhood, to his turbulent teens, my life has been filled with honor and anxiety ever since, so proud to have bore a son, so petrified something would harm him.

Nic

Nic 1

young years

Nic 2

Nic was more boy than we bargained for. Stitched up twice by the age of two, he bounced off walls of our tiny Parisian flat. Age four, he head butted his aunt and broke her nose one Christmas Eve with an over exuberant hug. In boyhood, he endured a pine cone in the eye, dislocated ribs, and a shattered ankle, results of a rough and tumble life.

As a three-year-old, when Nic’s teacher punished him for being afraid in her unruly class, we removed him from school for a semester. He has complained about school ever since, yet excels in class. Though he writes so well that his college history dissertation on the Dakotas and Native Americans merited publication in historical journals, he still emailed papers to me at 1 am to tweak. Even after his patience has been tested working with underprivileged students as a part of Athletes for Education program, he still wants to enter the teaching profession.

As a boy he gave me homemade gifts – an ornament, a wall hanging, a framed photo –then took them back when he got mad – but no matter what, at night he would curl up in my lap to read stories and talk about our day.

“I don’t want to get braces, allergies, or glasses,” he stated as a six-year-old. When I explained you don’t have any choice in the matter, he reasoned, “Okay, I wouldn’t mind braces. It’s like wearing a necklace in your mouth.”

Ever so perceptive, a few years later, he announced, “We are growing up too fast, in five years Nathalie won’t live here anymore.”

With a wonderful sense of humor, Nic entertained us with his famous one-liners with his perfect sense of timing. As a kid, pointing to his plate, wrinkling his nose, he’d ask, “What’s that?”

“Fish,” I’d say.

“Oh no, not junk food for dinner again.”

Grateful for glimpses into his boyhood, I became better at understanding male competition, saving face, and how to coach guys. During rides to practice, shooting sessions and late night talks, our time together gave me invaluable insight into helping my students.

Like most 21^st century kids, weaned on electronics if there was a button, he’d push it; if there was gadget, he’d bust it – accidentally.

While “helping” tidy up, he broke my reclining chair and the remote control.

“Send him to my house to help clean,” my sister insisted, “I need a new vacuum cleaner.”

As a mom I would do anything to shield him from pain, to protect that little boy in my memory. Silly me. Today he is a tall, strong, intelligent, man; I am not sure he ever needed my protection. Yet, his dad’s and my love is there always in a whisper, an invisible force of strength every step of his way.

As he enters the future, we remain behind marveling at how that kid, who now towers above us, grew up so fast when we weren’t looking. In a blink, he is gone from our day-to-day lives, but never far from our hearts where he remains cherished at every stage.

In keeping with French tradition, he bears his grandfathers’ names; I see a blend of his American, French, and Norwegian ancestry. He shows the pride of Grand Papie Elie who led the troops down the Champs Elysées at the end of WWII, the courage of Great Grandpa Olson who sailed from Norway to a new life in America and the strong character of Great Grandpa Mac, who coached college football in his nineties.

As Nic grew, he adopted the qualities of the men in his life. The industriousness of Papie Guy, the kindheartedness of Grandpa Jim, the perceptiveness of Uncle Doug, the playfulness of Uncle Dick, the handiness of Uncle Cliff, and the integrity of his father.

Nearly a quarter of century ago, I carried my 3-week-old baby on the Metro to the Embassy in Paris to attain his American passport. The civil servant read his birth certificate aloud,

“Nicolas James-Ralph Guy Lechault – such a big name for such a little lad.”

That little guy has grown into his name. Hats off to Nic. Bravo!