Last week, as I was doing some research for The Belgian Researchers' Obituaries project, I came across the name of Fernand DuBois, whose daughter, Renee lived in Kokomo, Indiana where he had spent the summer in 1950.The obituary peaked my curiosity about Renee. And this is how I found this wonderful October 7th, 1946 Kokomo Tribune article, "Belgian War Bride Quick Convert to American Football Enthusiasm".
It explained how she had become a quick football enthusiast and went into detail about her origins and her first weeks in Kokomo.
She had met her then future husband, Captain William Linkhorn, in October 1944 in Liege, while he was visiting the city. Although she had a degree in Pharmacy from the Universite de Liege, she turned to teaching languages and became instrumental in establishing a French program for adults at the Indiana University's Kokomo campus and a conversational program for school aged children (grades 4-7) in 1952, which she taught until she moved away to Mansfield, Ohio, where she continued teaching French. It looks like she moved away from Ohio again as her husband's obituary places them in Cape Cod in 2007.
What really caught my attention however is the fact that she attended the Lycee Leonie de Waha !
How amazing it is that although we will likely never meet, we have shared experiences that bind us as though we had... We have walked the same hallways... We have opened the same doors... We have followed a similar path that brought us both here... We both became involved in teaching French...
Our children grew up 100% Americans, with whom we can never really share these hallways, doors, these experiences in the same way...
I wonder where the many young women who graduated from the Lycee over the years are leaving a legacy, where they made their mark on the world, as we all do. Some are never mentioned anywhere again but their influence is felt for generations all the same!
