tlucey

My mom went to school there in the late 50's, but I can't seem to fine anything online about the school or even if the school still exits. I'd like to visit the area on our next trip to France. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

marcy_

tlucey,

Ecole de jeunes filles just means "school for girls," so I imagine that it was just the local primary school for girls in that town.

Now in France I think almost all the schools are co-ed, so that school probably doesn't still exist in its same form anymore.

Still, though, the building may very well still be there, and may still be used as a school. Just probably not for girls only.

kenderina

Evreux-Fauville was an US military base at that time so maybe it dissapeared when the people working on the base left. But also maybe the building still exists, as marcy says.
This is the tourist office website of the zone, maybe you can write them and ask :
http://tinyurl.com/2nqhdn

Dave_in_Paris

It's fairly common to see the designations of French school buildings carved above a door, "Ecole des Jeunes Filles," for example, and if the building were still there it might be identifiable. You can reach Evreux easily from Paris by train from the Gare St. Lazare, a ride of about an hour. In Evreuex you would need a car. Because Evreux-Fauville was a military base, the school may have been in less typical quarters, however. In the late '50s the base apparently was under U.S. command, but maybe there were French personnel there, too. Was your mother American or French? If a local newspaper has continuity from that era today, its archives also might tell you something. And so might the local library.

Dave_in_Paris

Here's an on-line gallery of photos of the Evreux-Fauville base, etc. The dates vary:

http://edmerck.tripod.com/gallery.html

Dave_in_Paris

Click on the pamphlet cover on the first page of that photo galley. It's information that was provided for airmen assigned to the base and their families. Lots about base facilities in those 25 pages but just a short mention of schooling for children. (It does date a bit later than the period you're tracking.) Interesting that in that era, early 1960s, the higher grades appear to have been conducted off the base at the Dreux American High School. Maybe they were off-base earlier, too?

Here's a link to the history of the Dreux American school, though it was opened in 1960. Your mother graduated by then?

http://www.members.aol.com/VickiK3275/

tlucey

Thank you everyone, I'm going to check out the sites now. My mom is Dutch, but her father was American, hince they traveled a lot since he was in the service. She did graduate from a school there, but I believe she said it was not on the base, it was located outside of it and the girls there only spoke french and she was the only non-speaking french girl there, of course that changed over time. I believe she would have graduated in 1957.

letour

I was taken on a tour of a small village near Aix-en-Provence recently and the former Ecole des Jeunes Filles there now serves as the town library I believe. The Ecole des Jeunes Filles is carved into the stone and thus the building's original purpose remains in view.
Could be that the your mother's former school building is still there but is perhaps no longer a school.

letour

Dave_in_Paris

Yes, that fits the information on the links I posted. Starting in 1960, high school students who were children of air force personnel went to school in Dreux; they were bussed there and slept over several days a week. Nothing specific on what was done beforehand, but my guess is that the upper grades, at least, were conducted off the base, so you would be looking for nearby schools, perhaps in Evereux. Your mother started without speaking French and graduated: quite a feat!

onceuponatime

Amazing to find your post! I attended L'Ecole des jeunes filles" in Evreux in the late 50's so may have known your mother. It was a day and weekly-boarding girl's Catholic school held in the Cathedral in Evreux. You did not have to be Catholic to attend, though we were taught by nuns, and had vespers with Hail Mary's every night. It was essentially unchanged since probably the 14th century -- except for cannon and bullet holes from various wars. Yes, it was all in French, of course, and only a few American girls -- we were not allowed to speak English, even to each other. My father was stationed at the Evreux-Fauville Air Force Base. We lived in base housing and walked to school through the "forest", monastery grounds, and down into town. Please contact me and let me know more about your mother. I found your post because I am taking my daughter there in the spring -- show her where I went to school and lived -- family history. I was trying to find more information about the school. I would love any information you have and will happily share mine.

ira

>Amazing to find your post! I attended L'Ecole des jeunes filles" in Evreux ...<

Ain't Fodor's wonderful?

cigalechanta

This is the most interesting outcome I have seen and will be interested in watching it unfold.
tlucy and onceuponatime, I wish you good luck.

tlucey

onceuponatime...I just emailed you. This is very exciting. My mother would be so happy to find out if perhaps you both were in school together. Did you graduate there?

letour

Chouette!

VickiK3275

Regarding the high school at Dreux, I attended Dreux from 1964 until the school closed in 1967. The school was located on Dreux Air Force Base and students were comprised of dependant kids whose parents were either Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines or worked for the State Department/Foreign Service and stationed in a locale that did not have an American High School. There were four dorms, two girls dorms and two boys dorms and many students stayed in the dorms 7 days a week through the school year.

46rick

Stationed at Dreux 63-67. One of last to depart after closing of base.Three of four kids attended that school, only spoke French. I took them there each morning and picked them up in the evening. One of the teachers on base at the school was a Tina Delgado, she lived in the trailer next to us. I worked in Engineering, and the electrical shop.There are pictures somewhere? What a small world. That was some assignment.

46rick

Vickik3275, you would remember the teen building that was opened? We didn.t have the electrical power to operate it totally and has a temporary generator set up in the front of the building which was noisy to give it power. I had to keep it filled with fuel and keep check on it. It cut into my fun time each day!

tondalaya

So happy to see these re-connections. It gives one faith.

klondike

Wow! What a small world we live in! I find this just amazing.

FauxSteMarie

There was one time I answered a question from a total stranger on AOL about directions from Paris to Montpellier.

I asked her if her daughter was at the program at the Universite de Montpellier with The College of William & Mary. "No," she replied, "but my daughter knows some of the William & Mary program students." She then began to tell me a tale about her daughter having gone to visit a family in Dijon with a William & Mary student the previous weekend. She told me the William & Mary student's mother had lived with that family when she attended the Universite de Dijon 25 years before.

I stared at the email and couldn't believe what I was reading.

I then told the woman that asked for directions that the story was accurate in all respects except that the other student's mother had been to the Universite de Dijon 30 years prior not 25 years prior.

Of course, her daughter had gone with my daughter to visit my "family" from my days at the Universite de Dijon the previous weekend.

The joys of the internet!

And two pen pals from my youth located me through using online resources. One of those people was a Romanian woman who immigrated to the US and ended up living in the town where I grew up. I, of course, had long since left.

It is a small world and the internet has made it a lot smaller.