| Notes |
- RESEARCH_NOTES:
1. Censuses:
1960 LDS Church, FHL film 471796, May 1960, 1020 Gramercy, Ogden 21st Ward, Lorin Farr Stake:
Jack Merlin Petersen, Elder, b. 22 Mar 1932 at Ogden, UT.
Irene Lydie Nadia Filonoff De Lanskoy, member, b. 9 Aug 1933 at Nice, France.
Kerry Andre Petersen, child, b. 7 Aug 1954 in Ogden, UT.
Karen Lorie Petersen, child, b. 9 May 1956 in Ogden, UT.
Chris Robert Petersen, child, b. 9 May 1956 in Ogden, UT.
Notes previously of Ogden 8th Ward of the Lorin Farr Stake residing at 650 8th St.
2. Naturalization record, 1952, U.S. Naturalization Cert. dated 16 Nov 1955, District Court, Ogden, UT; Name change by Decree of Court to Irene Nadia (de Lanskoy) Petersen as a part of naturalization. Original first name was Lydie.
3. Nicolas Filonov is the birth father of Irene. Name reported to civil authorities in Nice at time of birth was Irene Nadia (and as Catholic) which concealed her Jewish ancestry later protecting her from future Nazi occupation and its anti-semitism in Nice, France. Nicolas de Lanskoy presented himself later 29 Mar 1946 as the father to the civil authorities in Nice which made him the legally recognized father according to civil records. He had no marriage relationship (but did have an intimate relationship) with her mother. Later De Lanskoy married Nevoussia 22 Nov 1958
4. Education: Commencement invitation, 10 May 1979, graduation from G.E.D. program, Anchorage, AK.
5. The newspaper "The Ogden (Utah) Standard-Examiner," Sunday evening, November 22, 1959, p. 2C:
"Person to Person.
From Europe.
Good to get back! … Mrs. Jack M. Petersen will arrive home today with her three children, Kerry, and twins, Karen and Chris, to join her husband, after seven months in Europe.
Mrs. Petersen, a native of Nice, France, has been there visiting her Russian parents, Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas de Lanskoy, who are now making their home in Nice. It was her first visit home in nine years.
Mrs. Petersen came to America is an LDS convert and receive her American citizenship papers four years ago. Mr. Petersen joined his family for a month in the summer and while there he and his family visited in Scotland, England, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, and Germany and Denmark.
"My wife's mother acted as interpreter," Mr. Petersen said, "as she speaks 14 languages. She was attached to the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., at the time of the Russian revolution."
He explained that after the overthrow of the Russian government, Mrs. Petersen's parents were exiled in France and have lived there since."
[Kerry's note: Article inaccurate in regards to Irene's correct parents and the number of languages spoken by her mother. Her mother was never married to Mr. Lanskoy; he was a family friend who gave his family name to Irene at her birth. Her mother spoke Russian, German, French, and English.]
6. Irene's recollection: "I only had had one that I called my Godmother. Her name was Andree Blin (double e is not a mistake as in French a female Andree would have an accent on the first e) and she was not my official Godmother. The Official one I never met. Her first name was Lydie as my middle name used to be till I dropped it when I received my Citizenship. Andree was a great friend of ours and when Kerry was a Missionary she had a man in her life but not married. Kerry tried to teach them the Gospel but to no avail but they did get married from his efforts. His last name was Mr. Bailet and I have a picture of them. She lived at 49 rue Rossini in Nice. Her uncle was a Catholic Cardinal and she did private beauty facials and beauty massages. She declared my name at the Town Hall at my birth, my Godfather's name was Hubert de Von Den Brook (sp) he was a priest helper at the Church (nice guy)."
BIOGRAPHY:
1. "Additions and corrections to Patrick's account below: Elizabeth Herzenberg Werblovsky was born 25 December 1866 in Moscow, Russia. She was the eldest child of Renee or Rebecca and Edouard Herzenberg. She died the 19th June 1942 in Nice, France. She was married to Adolphe Werblovsky and they had two daughters (I don't remember in what order, but one died early in infancy and I believe was called Natasha or Natalie (same) and my mother Catherine (Ekaterina Adolphevena(sp)) Werblovskaya or Werblovsky was born 8th October 1893 (Russian dates given are on new Russian calendar). Catherine was married legally twice - in Russia to Victor Butzkoy and in Paris to Nicolas Olimpieff. She had a son Artemy Victor Butzkoy, born in St. Petersburg, Russia on 16 June 1916, died 26 November 1993 and a son Andre Olympieff born in Nice, France 26 December 1926 and died in Nice, France, from complications of measles on 28 July 1929. Irene Nadia was born in Nice, France on 9 August 1933 fathered by Nicolas Filonoff, common law husband and tremendous alcoholic or "wino" and very abusive when drunk. Mother did not let him recognize his paternity and on account of Hitler rising to power had me baptized Catholic and declared at the City Town Hall as Irene Lydie NADIA (as last name), I went by that name till 1945, never questioning why I was the only catholic in the family and why I had the last name of Nadia. I was never told about my Jewish-ness till after the WWII, which probably saved my "derriere." My biological father was Russian Orthodox and used to sing in a choir at the beautiful Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Nice, France; I used to attend with him at times and also went there at age 5 to kindergarten and acquired a bit of Russian reading skills (very rudimentary). I always spoke Russian and French from infancy. We lived on Avenue Shakespeare across from the hotel my grandparents owned called "The Petit Provencal" in the Russian Colony neighborhood (which was large). Mother separated from Nicolas Filonoff early when I was around five - he died at age 56 on 19 March 1945 from alcohol related disease. We moved in with my widowed (wife to my maternal grandfather Adolphe born 8 June 1861 and died 2 December 1934) grandmother Elizabeth Werblovsky who had a very nice apartment across from the main railroad station in Nice (38 Avenue Auber, apartment # 68 on the 3rd floor); the train station was my playground during the war years. There I witnessed first the French troops in 1939 and secondly the arrival of the Italian troops in 1942 as mother and I were sitting on a bench at the little garden area between train station and apartment. Then once again we witnessed another occupation by Germans and Vichy Government. I was late going to school because of whooping cough (I caught the cough in the bomb shelter in our building on December 7, 1941, which later I was to find out about that fateful day in Pearl Harbor) and other respiratory ailments and was taught how to become an avid reader by mother. When I went to Auber School across the street at age 8, I skipped a grade right away. In first grade, I had my favorite teacher, Madame Passeron, who I later had as a middle school teacher in another school (I have a picture with her, me, and the class as a first grader). I noticed that many of the children kept disappearing from the first grade class - well it turned out they were Jewish children leaving for the United States or other places to hide from the Germans and the Vichy Government. Little did I know I was one of them and thanks to mother's foresight of changing my identity, she saved my life clear as far back as 1933. The headquarters of the Gestapo interrogations was right in our courtyard where I witnessed detainees (Jewish) jumping to their deaths to escape going to Death Camps. It was at the famous Hotel Excelsior where hordes of poor people marched in front of our main front door on their way to cattle train wagons across the street at the station and on to the death camps. The children were shuttled by horse and buggies (form of taxi at the time - called "fiacre") - I still see their faces. I now realize I could have been one of them. Mother had a lot of health issues. Keep in mind she was almost 40 when I was born and she was an apatride refugee, a person without a country or no income or ability to work. She was very educated and spoke many languages fluently. She gave English lessons and was actively engaged as other people were in selling all valuable things that availed us with food. She was recipient of social healthcare and it seemed that we lived in dispensaries and doctors offices. I was always sickly and she wasn't in much better health. By this time all the family wealth was lost and we were in dire poor war conditions. She deprived herself of food to better feed me with meager food coupon allotments and establish better health for me. She lost her teeth, on account of food depravations and gum disease. In the summers I would go for three months to the "mountains" at the catholic summer camps such as Sospel and La Bolene Vesubie. In one such camp, I witnessed the Germans chasing the Italians in front of our camp in the high mountains to the Italian border; the Italians were dropping their arms in piles on the road. I forgot to relate that as we were occupied by all these people, and my playground being the train station, I would hang around these soldiers as a skinny waif with freckles and hungry hazel eyes and they all would offer some of their food. Lots of German troops were not even Germans and had been forced into their army from other countries and were nice to Children. They had hard to come by oranges, black bread with schmaltz, or lard, etc. As soon as Nicolas Filonoff died, I was recognized by Count Nicolas de Lanskoy as his child. He was a friend of mother's at the time. He was frequently a visitor in our apartment and was very nice and sang Russian songs and played on the guitar. He was also an actor and had appeared in movies made at Studio de la Victorine in Nice, France. He was very handy with tools and could fix anything. He lived in the Russian Colony neighborhood and in the same apartment building as my biological father; it was called Le Palladium at 2 Boulevard Tzarewitch, Nice. He lived on the very top floor and Filonoff lived in the basement. It was Lanskoy who learned first of the untimely death of Filonoff and came to inform us. The gift of a noble name in my behalf was quite something in those days - no longer a bastard child and at this point I became Irene Lydie Nadia de Lanskoy (I later dropped Lydie when I applied for my American citizenship). After the war mother began to receive wonderful care packages from Canada from the B'nai Brith Jewish organization and they were full of great surprises, foodstuff, etc. I also began to attend the Jewish organization ORT that gave technical school training as a sewing machine seamstress. The American USO occupied Nice and both Lanskoy and mother got employment and mess hall privileges (it helped with me being a kid of eleven with freckles and pigtails and looking just like Margaret O'Brien, the child movie star from US, or even like their kid sisters). They played Canasta and other card games while I waited for mother to get off her shift, who was an English translator in USO's different hotels around Nice. I would sometimes go to the mess hall and eat with her. This is where I got acquainted with plain Jello that the GI's would unload to me. They often took me along as a kid sister to football games where cake donuts were tossed about for fun and snacks. I went to concerts with them at the Palais de la Mediterranee, a plush theater and casino requisitioned by American troops. I collected photos and addresses of the GI's. As they would leave for other assignments, they would leave small gifts. My biggest and most prized was from Sgt. Avera from Florida who was on his way to Germany - he left me a small a traveling checkers game, which I still have, and 125 packages of Dentyne gum of 10 pieces per pack. When the soldiers first came to Nice, I and many kids used to beg for gum "one chwing gomme please" and we would chew on them for a month by sticking them in sweet water every night. Needless to say, I now thought I was a millionaire. After my training at ORT with a scholarship or cash stipend, I then started to work in a men's shirt factory as an apprentice and hiding the fact that I was only 12 and not 14 as the law required. I worked in two shirt factories and brought all my earnings to mother for our subsistence and in turn received movie money - we went to the movies a lot (no TV). She and I used to eat at soup kitchens, where they would dish what they called soup in a "gamelle' or small tin (aluminum), which I still have as well as some food coupons). Another job in Nice was as a nanny and light housekeeper for a little girl named Dominique, age 5. At this point I moved on my own into Foyer de la Jeune Fille (YWCA Hostel) in Nice and became very independent; I also worked in another Hostel washing dishes. One day hurrying on the run, I said to mother and a young Mormon missionary by the name of Stephen Beard that I was interested to go to the USA or America - they took me seriously, but I was just kidding! (I had no clue where it was or how far or even how to speak English). Regressing a bit, my brother Arik was living in London, England, since 1939 all through the London Blitz and we had lost touch with him because of the war; we did not reunite till 1949. At this time he was pretty well to do and after his visit in Nice, he invited me for two months to go to London from August to October 1949 - my first adventure away from home. The second one was the following year as an immigrant to Utah as a nanny to a boy named Lee, age 3-1/2, and his sister, Esther, 17 months old. I was also a helper to their mother who had severe Bulbar polio in Ogden, Utah. They advanced the money for my passage on the ship Queen Elizabeth and then across the US on a Greyhound bus (3 days and 3 nights - no facilities and stops every 3 hours). I did not speak English (mother tried to teach me, but I was sure I would never need it). I had to also attend high school part time as I was under age 16 (almost 17). This was May 1950. I lasted on the job a year and then went to work in a tailoring mill cutting linings for suits and coats. I then moved to a YWCA in Ogden, Utah. I met my husband, Jack M. Petersen, in May 1952 and married on September 26, 1952 ." - Irene Petersen Jul. 19, 2007 "I don't have time to tell my whole story, but I will tell you later; briefly: Edward was born in Jelgava called Jeligowo in Polish around 1834 I don't have the exact date left to Moscow in the 1860's probably or before. Married Rebecca Herzenberg, a cousin, and we still have to find her line He had many Children. One of them was Elizabeth (eldest) another Anna born 16 Mar 1882 in Moscow. Elizabeth had Katarina (Catherine) Verblovsky who lived in Nice who in turn had Irina (Irene) Petersen who in turn had Kenny. Irina moved to Alaska when she married Jack Petersen. Anna had Vladimir Landau my father who was born in St Petersburg and moved to Monaco in 1918 after revolution. So Irene and me and her family are cousins. I know them all and they visit me in Monaco from time to time. This is super short. All info I had was from my father hand-written. Kenny and Irene did more on the family line then me after that. We are still gathering pieces." - Patrick Landau: 19 July 2007. [Kerry's note: Jeligowo in Poland is erroneous and should be Jelgava in Latvia.]
2. Irene to Kerry Petersen 13 Jan 2009: "You went to France the first time in 1959, the year you turned 5. My last name until I was almost 12 was Irene Lydie Nadia declared at the Mairie as such and made Catholic. I did not know I was Jewish till after the war. (Lydie ? was my real Godmother but I never met her); acting Godmother was Andree Blin who also declared my ficticious name at the Mairie and was a great friend, the Godfather was the Sacristain at the main Cathedral Notre Dame on the main drag in Nice. His name was Hubert de Van Der Broek, I stayed in contact with him for many years. I went to Catholic school and church, but as I got older, I wondered why my mother was not Catholic. When I was about 12 and my birth father had died, De Lanskoy went to the Mairie with my mother and claimed he was the birth father - so it was not an adoption, but only an acknowledgement or Declaration. Since his name was nobility, it was a good family name to have. One may speculate also that be claiming Irene as a daughter, it opened up French citizenship for him since he had a daughter who was French."
3. Short autobiography from Irene dated 25 Feb 2016:
"I lived in Nice across the big train Station from 1933 through the world war 2 till I left in May 1950. 1933 was the beginning of Hitler's rise. My mother with my Russian father Nicholas Filonoff but never married him and didn't let him give his name to me. He was an abuser of wine and in those instances was an abuser in many other ways. He died March 19, 1945. So because of intense anti Semitism, she made me Catholic and gave me a fictitious last name, Irene Lydie Nadia, and never told me about being Jewish till the end of the war at about 11 or 12 years of age as she was afraid that I would blubber to someone. In our court yard was the infamous Hotel Excelsior the headquarters for Gestapo interrogation of Jews and then marched across the street right past our front door to the train station to the Camps and their eventual death (only I didn't know this. Jewish Kids kept disappearing in my classroom.) I played in the streets a lot and it could have been me. My mother saved us. She also painted our windows blue and one time I saw someone commit suicide from a balcony of that Hotel. We lived with my Grandmother Herzenberg. Mother and her communicated in German so that I would not understand their conversations. Grandmother died in June 1942, she was the oldest of the Herzenberg children (9, I think) your grandfather being the oldest of the 2 boys. I spoke Russian and French from birth and English at 16. I used to go to a Catholic girls Camp in Sospel for 3 months at the time. I attended very little schooling as I was a sickly child. But I educated myself by reading a huge amount. Suzanne Herzenberg was my idol relative."
4. "Autobiography, March 19, 2015
I am Irene Lydie Nadia de Lanskoy Petersen.
In my youth I went by the name of Irene Lydie Nadia. I was born on 9 August 1933 in Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France. My parents were Russian refugees of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. They were "apartheid" people - people without a country. My mother was Jewish which had an impact on my life. My maternal grandmother was born as Elizabeth Herzenberg. According to her death certificate, she was born 25 December 1866 in Moscow, Russia. This certificate was per the information supplied by my mother to the Nice, France authorities; however, the Latvian Archives in Riga has since shown that she was born in Kuldiga (or Goldingen) in the Courland region of Latvia. She was the eldest child of the ten children born of Edouard or Elias Ocipovitch Herzenberg and his wife Renée or Rebecca also with the maiden name of Herzenberg. Renée was a cousin, but her exact relationship is currently unknown. Edouard was born in Mitau, Latvia, according to my mother's recollection; however, it may have actually been in Pilten, the ancestral home of his father Joseph. Edouard moved from to Latvia to Moscow, Russia, with his young family. My grandmother died on 19 June 1942 in Nice, France. She married my grandfather, Adolphe Werblovsky, who was born 8 June 1861 in Vilnius, Lithuania and died 2 December 1934 in Nice, France. They had two daughters -- one, named Natasha or Natalie, died early in infancy, and my mother, Catherine (Ekaterina Adolphevena [sp]) Werblovskaya or Werblovsky was born 8 October 1893 in St. Petersburg. (Russian dates given are on new Russian calendar).
My mother, Catherine, was married legally twice - to Victor Petrovich Butzkoy 24 September 1915 at Mironocitkoy Church, Kharkiv, Ukraine, and Nicolas Olimpieff or Olimpiev 9 Oct 1923 at Saint-Cloud, Hauts-de-Seine, France in Paris. Victor was born 24 May 1890 at St. Petersburg and Nicolas was born 21 May 1897 in the Province of Don, Stanitza, Oustniedveditzkaya, Russia
She divorced her first husband 27 July 1922. She had two sons: Artemy Victor Butzkoy was born in St. Petersburg, Russia on 16 June 1916, and died 26 November 1993, in St. Helier, Jersey (Channel Islands); Andre Olimpieff was born in Nice, France on 26 December 1926 and died in Nice, France at two years of age from complications of measles on 28 July 1929. I was fathered by Nicolas Filonov, my mother's common-law husband, who was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine. She did not let him recognize his paternity as he was a tremendous alcoholic or "wino" and very abusive when drunk.
Catherine, my mother, was raised in St. Petersburg, Russia. Her family was very well-to-do. Her father was a banker. As a child she was quite pampered and was cared for by private nannies.
My mother left Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution (see Appendix 1) with her first husband on his government assignment for the Tsar. Victor Butzkoy was a captain in the army who had served in World War I. He was then an assistant military attaché, and was sent to Tokyo, Japan and Washington, D.C. They left in December 1916 and traveled eastward across all of Russia by train in very cold conditions all the way to Khabarovsk and on to Vladivostok, leaving Russia for the last time, heading for their assignment, which was to last for one year. After Tokyo, they traveled to Washington, D.C., via the ship "Empress of Japan" arriving 15 January 1917 at Vancouver, Canada, from where they travelled by rail across Canada entering the United States at 31 Jan 1917 at St. Albans, Vermont. They spent some time in New York City before arriving to Washington, D.C. While there they were able to visit Niagara Falls and Coney Island. But the Revolution took place in October 1917 and they were never able to go back to their homeland. They had left Artemy Victor (Arik), my half-brother, in Russia for her parents to take care of. It was much safer for a small baby to stay in his home environment than go on that long trip. I have a newspaper clipping about her visit to Washington, D.C. (Appendix 2). They actually left from Petrograd, Russia - the city of St. Petersburg, whose name was changed to Petrograd in 1916, then to Leningrad, and is now again St. Petersburg.
Mother and her husband returned to Europe and spent a lot of time trying to get her parents out of Russia. Some of the time was spent in Sweden with her cousins. After a struggle and a lot of red tape my grandparents and baby Arik were able to escape through Finland. They were then reunited and lived in many cities throughout Europe including Wiesbaden and Berlin. They spent some time in England. They were finally permitted to live in France as refugees. The family of my mother's husband, Victor Butzkoy, stayed in Russia. Victor sent what help he could to his parents. They were landowners in Ukraine and Arik was able to receive revenue from these holdings later in life. She married her second husband, Nicolas Olimpieff, and ended up, along with her parents, in Nice, France. Nicolas worked in my grandparent's restaurant, which was named "Tip-Top." After this marriage failed, they separated and vanished from her life. She then met my natural father, who was doing odd jobs at my grandparents' hotel in Nice. Mother and Nicolas Olimpieff were never legally divorced; she lost contact with him.
My mother was a talented artist. She studied very early already painting and drawing at home in Petrograd. She had a private teacher who taught her very serious drawing first and then painting in water colors. One of her teachers was an artist of the Academy of Art of Petersburg and used live models at her home. She studied art at schools in St. Petersburg, Cohran Art Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Kingston Art School in England for oil painting. In these schools she was considered one of the best. She liked portrait painting, scenery, flowers, seascapes but not animals. I am also told that she studied piano for 10 years. But maybe because of the condition in which we lived, I did not see much of her talent or hear her play the piano.
The political climate in 1933 was becoming very anti-Semitic throughout Europe. Hitler and the Nazis were beginning to gain full power. This was not new for my mother, she had experienced it through her youth in Russia. She was fortunate, as her father was a "Jewish merchant of the 1st guild" with special privilege. They were permitted to live in St. Petersburg while most other Jews were not. It did require a passport. However, in 1904-5 during the pogroms of the Russian Jews, the Jews even there were persecuted, killed and robbed. It became safer to leave the capital. She was taken with her governess to live in Abo, Finland. When things were safer, she returned to Petrograd and lived in the family's flat for the rest of her childhood and part of her married life. Through these special privileges, she was able to attend school at the Petrograd Gymnazia of Princess Oblensky -- one of the exclusive schools for daughters of aristocratic and wealthy families. They were allowed to have only 10% Jewish girls' enrollment. At this school she continued her art studies.
With her Jewish heritage, my mother did not give me a family name. She had me baptized a Catholic and declared me at the City Town Hall of Nice as Irene Lydie Nadia, with Nadia as a last name. I went by that name until 1945, never questioning why I was the only Catholic in the family and why I had the last name of Nadia. I was never told about my Jewish heritage until after World War II, which probably saved my "derriere." My mother carefully guarded this secret from me and others.
I was born at home, in a basement apartment at 22 Avenue Buenos Aires in Nice, France. This was in the large Russian section of town and Russian was my first language at home, and, of course, I learned French simultaneously. My mother felt that I should be protected and a French friend of my mother's, Madame Blin, who was present at my birth and knew of our Jewish heritage, registered me at the town hall under the fictitious name. This friend, Madame Blin, I later considered my Catholic godmother and she was very dear to me. My son Kerry visited with her many times when he was on his LDS Church mission in Nice in 1973. She virtually adopted him. He was the only Mormon missionary to have a Catholic godmother. I had another godmother named Lydie, who was given to me at my birth, but I didn't have much of a relationship with her. At the age of eleven I took my Holy Communion at the Catholic Church. I asked my mother if she would join the church that I belonged to, so we could go to church together. This is when my mother joined the Catholic Church.
Because my family lost everything in Russia, they had to start over very meagerly in France. When I came along we were rather poor. Although my grandparents had had a hotel and a restaurant in Nice, it was lost through litigation. I do not know the details - it may have had something to do with Mother's second husband. My mother spent a lot of time with attorneys.
Nice is a beautiful city in southeastern France on the Mediterranean Sea and the French Riviera with its beaches and its beach front. Tourism is essential to its economy, along with processing of olive oil and manufacturing of perfume and a cultural center. It is the capital of the Alpes-Maritimes Department, very close to the Italian border and the principality of Monaco, with the town of Monte Carlo between the two countries. Nice has an active commercial port, and the high mountains to the north protect the city from severe weather. It is built around a bay and Nice is divided into old and new parts, separated by a river named "The Paillon" and the "Colline du Chateau." The Colline du Chateau is a high rocky mound on which the first settlement was built with a castle and surrounding walls. Old Nice grow around the base. It was a well-known trading colony in the ancient world and was taken by the Romans in 152 BC. It has changed rulers many times through the years.
My biological father, Nicolas Filonov, had a Russian name, but he was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, possibly on 23 December 1891. He belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church and used to sing in a choir at the beautiful Russian Cathedral in Nice. I used to attend with him at times and he also took me to the beach when I was young. At that time, we lived on 17 Avenue Shakespeare across from the hotel my grandparents had previously owned, called "Le Petit Provençal," in the large Russian colony neighborhood. Mother was never married to him. They broke up when I was around five years old. He died at age fifty-six on 19 March 1945 of alcohol-related disease. I was 11 years old. He was buried in a pauper's grave at the Caucade Cemetery in Nice and his remains were removed after ten years. After his death, I wasn't allowed to go into his apartment to get any of his belongings, and I was not allowed to attend his funeral, but had to wait in the cemetery outside of the chapel. I am not sure why this was done.
We moved in with my widowed grandmother, Elizabeth Werblovsky, when I was about five years old. She had a very nice apartment across from the main railroad station in Nice at 38 Avenue Auber, apartment #68 on the third floor. The building had three elevators, two for tenants and one for service workers. My grandfather had died when I was one year old. The railroad station was my playground during the war years.
After my father died, I was legally recognized in 1946 by a family friend, Count Nicolas Pavlovich de Lanskoy, as his daughter. I was twelve years old at the time. My name then changed to Irene Lydie Nadia de Lanskoy. By recognizing me, it gave him the opportunity to claim and receive French benefits. Having a good name, a noble name, was important and significant at that time and it was a wonderful gift. Now as an adult, it seems to complicate my genealogy since I had no real family ties to him. I later dropped "Lydie" when I applied for my American citizenship. I am a first-generation American naturalized on 16 November 1955 at Ogden, Utah. Nicolas de Lanskoy was a frequent visitor in our apartment and was very nice to us. He was Russian, a nobleman of a well-known Russian family, a talented man who could sing, act, and play the guitar. He played in movies and theatrical groups. Because he had been in the cavalry, he was good with horses and was given different movie parts where horses were used. The movies were made at Studio de la Victorine in Nice. He was very handy with tools and could fix anything. He lived in the Russian colony neighborhood in the same apartment building as my biological father. It was called Le Palladium at Boulevard Tzarewitch, Nice. He lived on the very top floor in a one-room apartment with an equally large terrace, and my father lived in the basement. It was he who learned first of the untimely death of my father and came to inform us. He was married later (1958) to a very nice Russian lady name Mnevert Nevoussia Sabaneeff, who was much younger than he (she was born 24 October 1919 in Moscow). My family and I visited with them in France several times and she visited us in Alaska in 1979. Count de Lanskoy died 30 October 1977 in Nice.
Throughout my youth, they called me "Lala", a common Russian nickname. I attended a Russian kindergarten when I was five, in the year 1938. The school was close to the Russian cathedral. I learned a bit of Russian reading and writing skills, but it was only rudimentary. That was my only formal education in the Russian language, which I spoke fluently, along with French. I loved going to school, but being sickly with all kind of illnesses and anemia, I didn't go to French kindergarten or to the French first grade.
As preparations for World War II began - I was then six years old - soldiers began occupying several buildings by the train station. First I witnessed the French soldiers in 1939, and then came the arrival of the Italian troops in 1942. Mother and I were sitting on a park bench in a little garden area between the train station and our apartment building. All of a sudden the Italian soldiers came rolling in on military trucks and occupied Nice. Then once again, a few months later, sitting on the same bench, we witnessed the occupation by Germans and their Vichy government administrators.
I often played in the streets, which I considered to be part of my playground. I didn't realize that I should have been more concerned for my safety, especially at such a young age.
Because the train station was my playground, I hung around these soldiers. I was a skinny waif with freckles and hungry hazel eyes. Not all the German soldiers were bad. A lot of the enlisted soldiers were drafted into the German army from Poland, Finland, and other captured countries and were often serving against their will. Some were White Russians who joined to help Germany free their homeland. I was fascinated by the different soldiers. They were nice to me and other children. They gave us things that were hard to come by, such as oranges and black bread with schmaltz (lard), and other treats.
My mother, being extremely well-educated and intelligent, taught me how to read not only French but Russian at home. I recall how I resisted her insistence that I should learn English, telling her I would never need that language. How little I knew then.
I had private lessons from a very old French lady who used to do nothing but give me dictations, and I became a very good speller by doing this. I read books and books and more books. I would read in bed, but sometimes I was supposed to go to sleep, so then I stuffed clothes and other things under the door to hide the light. Sometimes I used a small electric lamp under my covers so I could read late into the night, just devouring books. I was able to get these books from a friend of my mother, classics written by Jules Verne and Victor Hugo and others. They were all very good books. I did a lot of pretend playing in our apartment. I made my own house with blankets, curtains, and pillows. I put a little lamp in them and read till all hours of the night. I did a lot of walking in town and in the countryside. I loved this famous old Mediterranean city and its beaches.
I was late going to school because of whooping cough, which I caught in the bomb shelter under our building on December 7, 1941. Later, I was to find out about that fateful day in Pearl Harbor. I had other respiratory ailments. Then I went to Ếcole Auber Elementary school, just downstairs and across the street from our apartment building. I was eight years old when I first went to school, and skipped a grade right away. That put me in the class of Madame Passeron, my favorite teacher. I later had her as a teacher in a middle school named Ếcole St. Lambert. I still have a picture with her and my class.
My mother was very artistic. One day I took a picture to school that my mother had painted of my favorite doll. My teacher hung it at the front of the classroom so everyone could see it. The school was watched over by the Italians and the next day the picture was gone. I believe the Italians liked it and took it.
At school, I then noticed that many of the children kept disappearing from the class. They were Jewish children leaving for the United States or other places to escape the Germans and the Vichy government. Little did I know I was one of them. My mother's foresight in 1933 in changing my identity saved my life.
Because I was raised through the war years under Italian, German, and Allied occupation, we lived a most disrupted life. I didn't attend more than three years of regular school in my youth or graduate from any school in France.
When France surrendered to Germany, the Germans set up a puppet government known as the Vichy government. A famous old World War I general, Maréchal Pétain, was put in charge of the government as a figurehead. In other parts of France they had a different government. I remember him pictured on a white horse, and there was a song that we had to sing about the Maréchal. We also had to write letters to him in school. When Admiral Darland came to town, we had to march in a parade for him; of course, the school was closed for that event. Admiral Jean-Francois Darland was a Petain supporter.
The Italians, who were allied with the Germans, occupied Nice and were much more sympathetic to the Jews. They were not persecuted as much by the Italians. So during this time there was a major exodus of Jews from those areas of France that were occupied by the Germans, with an estimated 30,000 or more coming to the Nice area for the Italian protection. This influx of Jews may have attracted the Gestapo to the area because they shortly thereafter replaced the Italians. They literally chased them out.
When I was ten years old, on September 6, 1943, a German SS officer by the name of Brunner arrived in Nice. He was a great specialist of the "Final Solution." The Nazis' final solution for the Jews was to exterminate them. I was too young to realize or understand what was happening around me but I learned about it later. Under his order, the hunt for Jews began. It was very dangerous for my Jewish grandmother and my Jewish mother and maybe even for me.
Unfortunately for us, he set up the Gestapo interrogation headquarters in the Excelsior Hotel, which was on the left side of our courtyard. They immediately took over the local synagogue. The Gestapo began to patrol the streets in special cars. My mother and grandmother were very careful. They kept their windows blackened out by painting them blue. They abided by the curfew, which was the time you had to be off the streets. Many times the Gestapo would blow air raid sirens to force people out of their apartments onto the streets. Special SS troops, with their sleeves rolled, would look over the general population on the street. They apprehended any pedestrian who had what they considered Jewish characteristics, without questioning or without ever verifying their papers. These people were hauled into the cars and taken to the closed synagogues, which the Germans had taken over and looted. These people were interrogated and subjected to a physical examination to check for circumcision - automatically considered proof of Jewishness.
The main synagogue was about a mile from where I lived. When people were identified as Jews, they were moved to the famous Hotel Excelsior. During this time they were robbed of all their possessions, which would include their household goods, jewels, money, and all other valuables. They were then systematically processed and loaded onto trucks to be taken to the train station. Sometimes they were forced to march in procession the two or three blocks to the station. They detained all the known Jewish rabbis and more prominent Jewish people. They raided hotels, apartments, clinics, offices, and even funeral processions.
Since Gestapo headquarters, where interrogations were held, was in our courtyard, I witnessed Jewish detainees jumping to their deaths to escape going to death camps. Hordes of poor Jewish people marched past our front door on their way to the train station across the street, where they were loaded in railroad cars to be taken to the death camps. The children were shuttled by horses and buggies, the taxi at that time was called a "fiacre." I can still see their faces. I now realize I could have been one of them.
I remember when I was ten years old, I would see lines of women carrying their babies and holding screaming children by the hand. The older people that could hardly walk assisted each other. They were watched very carefully by SS guards, who were ready to prod any who hesitated.
During this time, the SS gave bounty rewards for those who turned in Jews. I remember a Russian tailor who had his shop just down the street. He was known to turn in Russian Jews to the Gestapo for payment.
The Jewish underground was established to assist by supplying false papers, hiding and transporting people, and holding religious activities. I remember that Monsignor Remond, who was the head Catholic Bishop in Nice, was credited with helping to save more than 300 Jewish children by hiding them in the mountains, summer camps, and in boarding schools.
Mother had a lot of health issues. She was almost forty when I was born. She was an "apartheid" refugee, a person without a country, without income or ability to work. She was well-educated and spoke many languages fluently. She gave English lessons and was actively engaged, as other people were, in selling all her valuables to supply us with food. She was a recipient of social health care and it seemed that we lived in dispensaries and doctors' offices. I was always sickly and she wasn't in much better health. Of course, food and supplies were rationed, which continued until 1945.
By this time all the family wealth was lost and we were in dire poverty and lived in war conditions. Mother deprived herself of food rations to better feed me with meager food coupon allotments, in order to establish better health for me. She lost her teeth and most of her hair because of food deprivations and gum disease.
We ate a lot of rutabagas, pumpkins, and garbanzo beans, all boiled in water without any fat and very few spices, if any. Often we went to a nearby soup kitchen, where they dished out what they called "soup". We always waited in a long line for our daily rations; there we exchanged our coupons for food. As I said before, my mother many times went without her rations so I could have more food. Like everyone else, we brought our own container, a "gamelle", to the soup kitchen. My container was a small round aluminum box with a lid. I still have this container, as well as some of those food coupons. One of the soup kitchens was just around the corner from our apartment and the other one was on one of the main streets. The main street one was the nicer one. It was like a hotel restaurant and you could eat there. The other one was dirty, I once saw a woman pull a dirty old rag from the soup, that had somehow dropped into pot; thereafter she just kept serving the soup. Another place where we ate was the Salvation Army. If we peeled potatoes we could eat for free. I became very good at peeling potatoes.
In the summers for two or three years, during the war, I went for three months to the "mountains" at a Catholic summer camp. One of these camps was in Sospel, and we stayed in barracks. Another was in La Bollene Vesubie near the Vesubie River, where we stayed in a building. The camps were run by the Catholic nuns. The camps were good memories. We had lots hikes, religious devotions, and activities. At the Bollene camp, I witnessed the Germans chasing the Italians on motorcycles and in cars up into the high mountains and over the Italian border. The Italians were dropping their arms on the road in piles. They were safe if they made it back across their border. My grandmother died while I was at camp in June 1942.
Some of my bad memories were of sitting in bomb shelters, which were usually dark, damp, cold, and full of cockroaches and other bugs. At one time, we were running across the street to the shelter and I could hear bullets whistling past our heads. This took place during the Liberation of Nice in 1944. I was very sick. This illness seemed to affect my health; I was sick with bronchitis and other respiratory illnesses a lot thereafter.
When I was nine years old, the Germans hanged two men. Their names were Torrin and Grassi. This was done on 7 July 1942. They had resisted the Germans and were hung for display between the hours of five and eight o'clock in the evening while the streets were full of people going home from work. They had been hanged on both sides of the Galleries Lafayette department store at Avenue de la Victoire and the Place Massena. This was done to teach people a lesson and for weeks thereafter they had pictures posted in the window displays of the various stores of them hanging.
I remember when the Allies began to bomb the area - bridges and other strategic points, including railroad stations. The bombing started 11 November 1943 and it lasted until 14 August 1944, all in preparation for the American landing. Our railroad station was spared; however, many bombs fell on residential areas, killing a lot of innocent civilians and destroying others' homes. This created a lot of animosity towards the Allies. The people wanted to know how the Americans and British were going to save them by destroying them.
The streets leading to the sea were closed and fortified with concrete, and they had camouflage paint on them. Many machine gun blockhouses, trenches, antitank devices and antipersonnel mines were placed on the beaches and at key locations throughout the city. A park close to where we lived was full of trenches, and right outside our apartment building they built a blockhouse to watch over the railroad station. The Germans also destroyed "Le Casino de La Jetee," a beautiful old casino built on piers in the tidewater on the Promenade des Anglais.
After the Allied landings in the south of France, the French underground liberated Nice before the Allies entered the city. There was a grand celebration with flags waving and girls kissing the soldiers as they arrived. The collaborators were rounded up and some of them were shaved bald to humiliate them; other collaborators were even tarred and feathered. The Jewish underground organization became active and open again. They assisted greatly in getting food packages. They also reopened trade schools such as the ORT.
After the war, Mother began to receive wonderful care packages from Canada from the B'nai Brith Jewish organization and they were full of great surprises, foodstuffs, and so forth. I also began to attend the Jewish organization ORT, which gave technical school training, as a sewing machine seamstress. The American USO occupied Nice and both Lanskoy and Mother got employment and mess hall privileges. I may have helped this, as I was a kid of eleven with freckles and pigtails, looking just like Margaret O'Brien, the child movie star from the United States, or perhaps I was just like their kid sisters back home.
My father, Nicolas de Lanskoy, worked on the beach passing out Coca Cola and thongs (flip-flops) to the GIs to walk on the pebble-covered beaches.
My mother was able to work for the Americans, because she spoke English and several other languages fluently. I was about eleven years old, and this was a very happy time for me. After school when I waited for my mother to finish her shift, I would play Canasta and other card games with the GI soldiers. I became quite the card shark. She was an English translator and supervisor of recreation for the USO in many hotels around Nice. I sometimes went to the mess hall and ate with her.
This is where I got acquainted with plain Jello. The GIs would pass theirs on to me, as well as their Red Delicious apples. They often took me along as a kid sister to football games, where cake donuts were tossed about for fun and snacks. This was the first time I ever ate a cake donut. I went to concerts with them at the "Palais de la Méditerranée," a plush theater and casino requisitioned by American troops. I collected photos and addresses of the GIs. As they left for other assignments, they often left small gifts. My biggest and most prized gift was from Sergeant Avera from Florida, who was on his way to Germany-he left me a small traveling checkers game, which I still have, and 125 packages of Dentyne gum of ten pieces per pack. When the soldiers first came to Nice, many kids (including me) used to beg for gum. "One chwing gomme, please" and we chewed on them for a month by sticking them in sweet water every night. Needless to say, I now thought I was a millionaire. I also was given a soldier's New Testament book.
In 1944, when I was eleven years old, my mother applied for me to receive sewing instruction at the ORT trade school. In my free time, I learned to crochet and knit, but I wasn't very good at it. I did like sewing, but this was limited because we didn't own a sewing machine at home, so I could sew only when I was at school. I also did intricate hand embroidery on blouses for export and got financial remuneration. It was very tedious work
After my training at ORT with a scholarship or cash stipend, I started to work in a men's shirt factory as an apprentice, hiding the fact that I was only twelve and not fourteen, as the law required. I did chain or repetitive work on sewing machines. I worked in three different shirt factories and brought all my earnings home to mother for our subsistence and in turn I received movie money -- we went to the movies a lot.
The theaters were beautiful and big. We saw some great ones. Movies always started with a documentary and a newsreel of what was going on in the world, and they always had a cartoon. Then the black- and-white movie would start. We didn't have to worry about ratings, because there weren't any. The Catholic Church did give us some guidelines. One time my mother and I went to a movie, and I was wearing my only coat, a thin little coat. I still have a photo of that coat. It was on the back of my seat and someone stole it.
We didn't have television, radio, or a car, and we didn't get a newspaper. We got our news from those movie newsreels or we went to the newspaper building and stood on the sidewalk to read the latest news posted on the building's outside bulletin board. Sometimes we were told the news by a neighbor who had a radio.
As I said earlier, we lived with my grandmother for three years before she died. She was very stylish, and absolutely spotless about herself, a proper lady, but somewhat snobbish, at least to me. Before dying she had a bit of dementia accusing her noodle soup of being a bowl with worms. She was a perfect seamstress - she would mend socks and make them look like new, a true work of art. At that time we actually mended socks - we didn't throw anything away like we do now. My mother did not inherit any of her sewing talent. I thought my mother was quite old, because she was over fifty at the time. It was difficult for me to hear my mother and grandmother fighting a lot with each other, always in German. I did not understand the language, or what they were arguing about. I didn't like living with two "very old" women! They often had Russian people over for discussions of serious subjects and since children were to be seen and not heard I would fall asleep from sheer boredom.
One time we lived in an apartment (house-sitting) that belonged to a Madame Jacoulet. Her husband had committed suicide and she had taken her family to a town in the middle of France for a while. We had the whole apartment to ourselves. When they returned, we continued to share the apartment. Two of her teenage daughters and I often went to movies. One time we cut through an alleyway and an America soldier on duty as an MP exposed himself to us girls. This was a problem I had to deal with a lot.
When I was about 14, my mother and I had been fussing at each other for some time so I decided to move out on my own. I moved to a YWCA Christian home, where I had my own room. I was still working full-time as an apprentice in the factory, sewing men's shirts. I had my French identity card and work permit, which I still possess to this day. I then became very independent. I was very precocious for my age and began flirting with boys at the early of twelve or thirteen.
I also had another job when I was about age 15 as a nanny and light housekeeper for a family that owned a factory that made candy suckers. The little girl was named Dominique, age five. The job was rather difficult for me because the child was very spoiled and I was just too young for the work. I didn't enjoy that job very much. While I worked there I had a 23-year old boyfriend who worked across the street as a mason. He was much older than I. Some items were stolen from the house and they called the police on me. I was so nervous that my knees were shaking. The police said I must have done it because I was shaking so much. My bosses then dropped the charges. I also worked at one time in another hostel washing dishes and serving people at lunch time.
I did not know my half-brother Arik, I remember seeing him only once when I was very young. He left France in about 1939 for London, England and he was seventeen years older than I. He had done something that got him in trouble with the law and needed to leave. He lived in London all through the London Blitz and we lost touch with him during the war. We did not reunite until 1949. My mother by chance met an acquaintance on a street in Nice. She said she had just seen Arik in London and he was fine. It was this chance meeting that put us back in touch with him. Arik, came at once to visit us in Nice. England had been good to him; he was pretty well-to-do. After his visit he invited me for a two-month visit to London from August to October 1949. This was my first real adventure away from home. He was a manufacturer of "Knitmaster" machines and I helped in the office mostly dealing with mailing of advertisements. I made some friends and had fun visiting London. I felt very safe traveling throughout London on the busses. I also visited the LDS church in London.
Several months before my trip to London as I was working in the shirt factory on the upper floor of an apartment house, two young men knocked on the door and tried to introduce themselves and their message. They were Mormon missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My boss just sent them on their way. I was able to hear a little of their conversation and wondered what it was all about. At the same time my mother was walking on the street and saw a poster telling about a conference that the Mormon missionaries were putting on. That night my mother and I compared notes. She went to that conference and thereafter we invited the missionaries to our apartment. We had many of these meetings with missionaries conducted in our humble basement apartment. These discussions were then called "cottage meetings."
My mother had a great religious fervor in her and in her life, which she conveyed to me. She was always searching for something, for the true religion, attending in her life many denominations. This is what eventually led her into contact with the Mormon missionaries. With her language skills she was able to give them a lot of assistance. It was through this contact that my mother hoped for a better life for me in this church in Utah. I have often thought that all my blessings came from my mother and all of her prayers. Even though I was eventually baptized as a Mormon, my mother never was in her lifetime. During a visit to Nice in 1971 when my mother was permanently hospitalized, I asked her if she would be baptized if she were in better health. She responded affirmatively yes. I subsequently went back to Nice from Alaska later in December 1971 and stayed at the same YWCA Christian "Foyer de Jeunes Filles" that I lived at when I was younger before leaving to the United States. I left Nice 3 January 1972 and my mother passed away at the hospital on 8 January 1972. She was buried in the hospital cemetery with a simple wooden cross with part of her name misspelled. My son Kerry, when he was a missionary to Nice in 1973, was the first in my family to see the cemetery plot. It is no longer marked at this time.
One day, being late and in a hurry, I said to my mother and a young Mormon missionary by the name of Stephen Baird that I was interested in going to America - they took me seriously, but I was just kidding. I had no clue where it was or how far away it was or even how to speak English. I knew my mother had lived in the United States for eighteen months in 1916-17 and I thought I would like it.
Elder Stephen Baird had completed his mission and was going home to Salt Lake City, Utah. He was able to find a family he knew in Ogden, Utah that was looking for an "au pair," a nanny to help take care of two small children. The family was the Clair and Yvonne Williamsen family; the children were a boy named Lee, age three and a half, and his sister, Esther, seventeen months old. I was also to be a helper to their mother, who had severe bulbar polio
The Sandbergs advanced the money for my trip - $350 - I packed my cardboard suitcase and left my mom and my friends behind. I was then almost sixteen years old. In May 1950, I left France and came to America. I knew very little English, so a missionary named Ken Millard gave me a card that said "One hamburger, please" and also "One milk shake, please." I boarded the train in Nice, leaving with the intention of staying only three years. I got off the train in Paris, France and then traveled to Le Havre, where I boarded the ship "Queen Elizabeth" of Cunard Lines, sailing the Atlantic Ocean for five days. I had a cabin which I shared with a roommate, a young lady from Florida. We met Danny Kaye, a very popular stand-up comedian, and had a picture taken with him. My ship, the "Queen Elizabeth", raced her sister ship "Queen Mary" across the Atlantic to New York City. The "Queen Elizabeth" ended up scrapped in Hong Kong several years later and the "Queen Mary" is now a floating hotel and restaurant in Long Beach, California. From New York, I took a Greyhound bus to Utah. It took three days and three nights to travel across the United States. The bus had no bathroom, so we stopped every three hours. I showed my food card or pointed to someone else's meal to order my food. When I rode through Wyoming and saw it pass by the window, I wondered what I was getting myself into, especially when the bus driver said "Now we have 60 miles of nowhere." After traveling for three days and three nights I finally arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah. I hadn't expected the trip to take that long. I thought America was right next door.
In Salt Lake City at the Greyhound bus terminal, I met the Sandbergs, who were the parents of Mrs. Williamsen. I stayed with them for a few days. The first thing they offered me was a white mixture in a bowl that looked yucky. I came to find out that it was a tuna fish mixture for sandwiches. The bread, unlike French baguettes, locked like looked and tasted like white cotton. They then asked me if I wanted a drink of a brown beverage that smelled like medicine. I now know it was root beer. There were other firsts. I was also given a tour of the city and the temple grounds. After this, they took me to Ogden to meet the Williamsens. I had great apprehensions about this meeting. I have a photo of me on the temple grounds at which time I only weighed 114 lbs.
The family then introduced me to my new home and my new responsibilities as a mother's helper. I took care of Esther and Lee and helped their mother do anything she needed help with. The little kids would get mad at me for not talking to them in clear English. I was totally amazed by the vastness of their brand-new home and all the different gadgets in their home. They had all the latest electrical things.
I had my picture in the newspaper along with an article about my first experiences in my new home in the United States (Appendix 3). A French lady saw the article and phoned me and introduced herself as Genevieve Coburn. This was the start of a long and wonderful friendship. She also introduced me to a French club, where I made a lot of good friends.
I had to attend high school because of my age. I attended Ogden High School in the junior year and took English, seminary, P.E., and sewing. My classes were only in the morning because of my duties at the Williamsens. I did not graduate from high school at this time. However, I did achieve my G.E.D. much later when married and with five children in Anchorage, Alaska.
I celebrated my seventeenth birthday with them at Bear Lake, Utah and I had my first birthday cake. It is there that I got a very painful sunburn. I also went with them on a trip to Hurricane, Utah where I milked my first and only cow. Many years later in 2012 at the Alaska State Fair in Palmer, Alaska, my great-granddaughter Haylee Snegirev taught me how to milk a goat. At the time I was with Russian relatives visiting from Moscow.
I didn't really study the LDS Church scriptures as I should have, but I went to church every Sunday with the Williamsens. Remembering the abuse of drinking and alcohol in my youth, I was more interested in the sobriety of the Word of Wisdom taught by the Church more than the gospel text. I swore that I would never marry someone who drank. I joined the Church and was baptized 27 September 1950 in Ogden, Utah.
My pay was $35 a month and room and board. I then paid back $25 a month for my trip expense. I had $10 a month spending money. I did not do very well with the job and I found the arrangement not very satisfactory to me. So with my trip cost paid for, we agreed that I should leave after about one year of service.
It was then 1951. I left the Williamsens and moved to the YWCA in Ogden, Utah, which was the former mansion of the Browning Arms founder. I got a job as a cutter of linings for women's suits and coats at a tailoring mill named "The House of Duchesne." They paid me $140 per month - from that I paid less than $20 per month for rent at the YWCA. At one time I also worked at another tailoring mill named "20th Century Sportswear." I made lot of wonderful friends at the YWCA. To budget my money, I did not eat right. If I didn't spend money on food I'd have more to spend on clothes. Once again I ended up anemic. I only ate Campbell soups, sometimes cold, out of the can. My best meals came from eating out on dates with boyfriends.
I had many boys I liked in Utah. One was Ray Durlacher, who was in the Air Force. Another was Bob Coleman who was from Salt Lake City, who I dated for a while at the same time as I was dating my future husband Jack. I didn't feel too bad about that since Bob was also dating another girl at the same time. I had one somewhat serious relationship with a guy I dated for about a year. His name was Bob Jones and he had a beautiful Buick. I probably was using him more as my ticket away from the YWCA than for romantic purposes. I then broke it off, which did not go well since he threatened he would kill anyone that would date me. I took him seriously and avoided being seen by him. Later in life, I learned that he never married. His brother Gaylord Jones (aka "Gay") went to school with my future husband Jack.
While living at the YWCA, we had a male intruder one night who I discovered at the foot of my bed. I was unable to scream and so I called out to my roommate Ila Hess who promptly screamed for both of us. Twenty girls gathered together and the police came. Shortly after this incident in May 1952, I was at the American Food Store just down the block and around the corner at Washington Blvd. and 27th Street with my friend Norma James. My future husband, Jack Petersen, was working there part-time. He also worked at Hill AFB where we had the same mutual friend, Norma James. After noticing me at the food store, he later had asked her when she was going to line him up with a girl from the YWCA. She said which one? He responded: "The freckled-faced one." She said: "Do you mean the French one?" From this a blind date was arranged. Our first date was to the old Lagoon Amusement Park (before it burned down) near Farmington, Utah. Jack would spend a lot of time cleaning and polishing his new green Chevy which he had paid $2400 for. It had all the bells and whistles including blinds for the rear window, a sun visor for the windshield, and lots of chrome. For me his car was simply transportation. The lower part of the dash was chromed and I had to be careful to always keep my knees together.
After a brief courtship Jack Merlin Petersen and I were married on 26 September 1952 in the Salt Lake City temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I returned to France for the first time in 1959 to visit my mother. I was there for six months with my three young children Kerry, Karen, and Chris. Mother visited us for six months in Anchorage, Alaska in 1966.
Appendix 1:
The Bolshevik Revolution in the fall of 1917 was the overthrow of the Russian tsar's government, also known as the White Russians. The Bolsheviks were an extremist faction with the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, later renamed the Russian Communist Party - the Red Russians.
Appendix 2:
The following article, dated Sunday, 9 Dec 1917 from a Washington, D.C. newspaper, contains a photo of Catherine with the following:
"[Photo subtext:] Newcomer in Foreign Colony.
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Chris & Julie Petersen's Genealogy
1933 - 2021 (87 years)