I was born in Bordeaux, France on October 8, 1932. My mother Alice Gilbert was an American and my father Pierre Kressmann was French. He worked in the family wine firm. When my father, who was in the French Army, was killed in 1940, my mother left Bordeaux to take her children to America. I celebrated my 8th birthday in Portugal, while we were waiting for the boat to take us across the Atlantic.
Arriving in America, we went to live Toledo, Ohio, where my grandparents lived. There I attended “Maumee Valley Country Day School”. I mention this because it was such a good school and influenced me more than any other school.
I also remember Pearl Harbor.
In 1946 my Godfather, Roger Kressmann, invited me to live with him and his family. I didn’t hesitate for a second to return to France. We lived first Chateau Duhart-Milon, a wine chateau in Pauillac a few miles from Bordeaux. The next two years we lived in Algeria. Those 4 years were wonderful years, but at 18 I realized that I was not French, and that my six years in America had made me an American.
I returned to America, obtained an engineering degree from Purdue University, and joined IBM in Poughkeepsie, New York. I had gone ROTC and was a second lieutenant. My career at IBM was interrupted by my military service and I managed to get assigned to a base in Orleans France. At the time, my brother Jacques was a student in Paris and my sister Yvonne (called Bobinette), also lived in Paris. I went there often as it was only an hour’s train ride from Orleans.
While I visited Paris, I met Gail Griffis, a student at Smith College, who was taking her junior year abroad. We were married after I completed my military service, and she her college degree, and we lived in a converted one-room schoolhouse in Lagrangeville, a suburb of Poughkeepsie.
About 10 years later Gail and I divorced and I got an assignment with IBM to go to back to France, this time Paris. I met and married Anne L’Eveque de Vilmorin. We lived in Paris and Champigny-sur-Marne, a suburb of Paris. Then we went with IBM to Tehran, Iran for two years. At the end of two years we returned to America and settled in Raleigh, North Carolina. With the exception of a three year assignment in the Netherlands, Raleigh has remained home.
I am survived by: my brother Jacques Kressmann of Silver Springs, Maryland, and my sister Barbara Jane Kressmann Helander of Westbrook Connecticut; my wife Anne Kressmann; five children -- Kate Kressmann-Kehoe of Rochester New York, Sophie Kressmann Aceves of Corpus Christi, Texas, Pierre Kressmann of Washington DC, and Elisabeth Kressmann St. Pierre and Nicolas Kressmann, both of Raleigh, North Carolina; and nine grand-children -- Webster and Mae Kehoe, Gabrielle Aceves, Guillermo Kressmann, Christopher, Andrew, and Madeleine St. Pierre, and Oliver and Violet Kressmann.
The biggest fear I have is saying goodbye to my family and friends. I was brought up a Christian and do believe that at our death we will enter a new existence in the Kingdom.
Memorial donations, in lieu of flowers, can be made to The Red Cross.
COMPARTA UN OBITUARIO
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