My Family Feels the Depression
Excerpted from Business Boy to Business Man, by Robert Verreault (with Denis Ledoux). On October 29, 1929, the stock market crashed. Of course, I didn’t know that, as I was only six. Soon though, my parents, although they didn’t have stocks to crash, were beginning to feel the effect. By 1930, everyone was slipping into […]
My Aunt Blanche, My Favorite Canadian Immigrant
During these years, Aunt Blanche Lessard lived with us. When she was in her early twenties, while we were still on Shawmut Street, she had come down as a Canadian immigrant, looking for employment and had moved with us to Jefferson Street. In Lewiston, she apprenticed as a hairdresser with a Canadian woman and eventually […]
A Franco-American Memoir: April Fool’s Day
DL—The following excerpt is from We Were Not Spoiled, the Franco-American Memoir of Lucille Verreault Ledoux as told to Denis Ledoux. My Father Learns About April Fool’s Day Moving to Howe Street also meant that I lost my friends on Jefferson Street. I could still get together with Juliette and Jeannine at school but they […]
After a Book is Published: We Were Not Spoiled.
What happens after a book is published? As readers of this blog know, I recently published my mother’s memoir, We Were Not Spoiled. The book had been five years in the writing and had gone in and out of my focus. When I started to interview my mother and write the text, she had been […]
My father-in-law’s 100th birthday
On February 24, 2013, I celebrated my father-in-law’s 100th birthday. Arthur Blowen has been gone now for 28 years, and the people who were his peers and friends are mostly gone. There are many family stories about him. They are told as mythic journeys, Arthur slaying the dragons that assailed him. Here’s the plot line […]
Getting My Dream Coat
From We Were Not Spoiled, the memoir of Lucille Verreault Ledoux as told to Denis Ledoux. My mother-in-law had a lovely black Persian lamb coat. It had large buttons that were very fashionable at the time. That coat was heavy and warm, and Mrs. Ledoux wore it everywhere. She looked good in it. Rhéa had a raccoon coat […]
The First Months of My Marriage
e left Lewiston and our wedding guests to travel to Albert’s base in Syracuse, New York, at 1:30. Since it was still summer…
The Story of Why My Parents Came Down
While my parents were immigrants to the US, they had not really come to be immigrants. My father’s health had been affected by the tiny, deadly filaments called asbestos dust in his hometown…
The Importance of Education: High School Memories – 1930s
As I was finishing my sophomore year in June of 1937, Robert was graduating from Holy Family School. As when I graduated, my parents did nothing special to mark the occasion…