Anne-Marie Randall

As a teenager in war-torn Paris, although she spent summers in the quiet home of cousins in the Loire valley, Anne-Marie attended school in the city where she risked her safety smuggling copies of Churchill’s speeches past Nazi guards to her school and neighbors. The first of her family to earn a degree, at the Sorbonne, she taught math and science to high school students.

Anne-Marie immigrated to this country shortly after the war. She started immediately at Luzier’s Cosmetics in KC. She held several positions in retail on the Plaza and downtown, later working for Panhandle Eastern Pipeline Corporation and eventually Louis Dreyfus Corporation at the Kansas City Board of Trade.

Anne-Marie met upcoming lawyer Alvin C. Randall when both lived on Armour Boulevard in 1953. In 1957 they married at Trinity United Methodist Church, soon moving to Village Green Apartments; their son David was born in 1959. They took a plunge and bought a large fixer-upper in Waldo in 1961 when daughter Michelle Anne was born. Anne-Marie proved handy with paint, wallpaper, hammer and saw as she remodeled the home stem to stern. During this time Michelle lived under Anne-Marie’s constant expert care until she died at the age of 4.

Never one to sit still, Anne-Marie next helped parents of disabled children in the metro area with new techniques intended to aid neurological development. She was active in PTA, the St Andrew’s Womens’ Alter Guild and taught Sunday school there. She taught French at Pembroke Day School, Barstow, The Causerie Francaise, and as a substitute in many area private schools. She held several offices in the Alliance Francaise and the Causerie, often tutoring adult friends and neighbors’ children in French and art on the side. Shortly after Michelle’s passing she took in three of her husband’s sister’s children for a year without hesitation. When her son left for college Anne-Marie hosted “Entre Nous”, a weekly French language radio show on KCUR until 1984, interviewing French visitors to Kansas City of note or presenting an aspect of French music, culture or influence around the globe. Among other historical topics, she researched and delivered a five-part series on the role of women in medieval France. After the show ended she ran a fabric import shop on the Plaza for two years.

An excellent cook and seamstress, she appeared in the Kansas City Star’s cuisine section more than once. She could create and alter dresses, jackets, pants and shirts at will, and created dozens of Mardi Gras, Halloween and stage costumes for her family and their friends. She was an accomplished painter and draftsman…and square-dancer…as well.

Anne-Marie is preceded in death by her parents Pierre and Josephine Coulon, her daughter Michelle Anne and her husband the Honorable Alvin C. Randall. She is survived by her son David in Kansas City, her brother Pierre near Paris, his five children Laurence, Muriel, Pascale, Pierre and Mathilde, and many cousins in France.

Funeral Services will be held Saturday, December 21st, 10:30 a.m., at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, 6401 Wornall Terrace, Kansas City, MO, with burial following in Forest Hill Cemetery. Visitation will be held Friday, December 20th, at McGilley State Line Chapel, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.