In honor of Cécile Marie Jeunet Spalding

One year ago today, my cherished friend Cécile Spalding passed away.

I met Cécile shortly after moving to Louisville, Kentucky. I had spent the prior six months in Lille, became fluent in French, and didn’t want to lose my language skills.

Cécile welcomed students into her home and privately tutored them according to their ability. For me, that meant reading book passages and poetry aloud while Cécile listened, correcting my pronunciation and cadence when necessary. Vers trois heures de l’après-midi, dans le mois d’octobre de l’année 1844… “No, repeat after me,” she would say, re-reading a sentence or two while exaggerating certain syllables and softly clapping her hands to the beat of a well-turned phrase.

Cécile insisted on proper French, and I was a beneficiary of her determination.

When we were not reading and reciting poetry, we talked about current events, our families, and recent happenings in our lives – a birthday, a weekend away, a dinner among friends. Inevitably, this would lead to my learning new expressions. She summed up my stories with French proverbs. Il ne faut pas melanger les torchons avec les serviettes for an awkward social gathering or je tombe comme un cheveu sur la soupe for an unwanted arrival. I never learned these sorts of things in college and if I had heard them in France, they had gone over my head. Cécile made me feel like an insider and one of her own.

When I wasn’t speaking, I listened eagerly and learned about her incredible life. Cécile was Parisian in every sense of the word. She was born in 1924 to André and Aimée Jeunet and raised in the 16th arrondissement. She enrolled in the Ecole Municipale de Dessin et de Peinture, graduated with honors, and had a successful career designing fabric and wallpaper.

In vivid detail, she recounted life in Paris during the Nazi occupation. She described the hunger and the rationing program at her school. She was a J-3, based on her age and gender. This meant she received a small biscuit each afternoon, but the ingredients were cut with sawdust and were indigestible.

Finally, Paris was liberated. People had nothing, nothing, rien de tout, but champagne and wine appeared out of nowhere, flowed in abundance, and everyone celebrated in the streets.

In the spring of 1945, she met Richard, an American GI. They were married three years later. Cécile was a vrai Scarlett O’Hara. Her wedding dress was made from the lace curtains hanging in the dining room. While the seamstress pinned and measured, her mother described how they should be cut and sewn. She planned to rehang them after the wedding. With a smile, Cécile described the scene. She took pride in her mother’s ingenuity.

I could go on endlessly about Cécile and how much I enjoyed her company. I felt privileged to be her student and her friend. She was a remarkable woman, a mentor, and a role model.

I am forever grateful for all that she taught me – not only about the French language, but also about life, love, family, and the essence of French style.