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Charles De Gaulle ca 1949
Today is my daughter's birthday. She is thirty-something.
Today would have been my Dad's 83rd birthday. Yesterday
Mom retold a "Dad Story". Seems that sometime in the late
1940's or early 1950's Charles De Gaulle, who was between regimes,
stopped off in our little village in France to give a speech. The
primary college educated translator was "suddenly taken drunk
or some such" and Dad, the Cajun Boy from Louisiana, was called
on to do the play-by-play translation. He was given a copy of the
speech. Gen. De Gaulle give his speech and Dad realized that what
De Gaulle was saying wasn't what was written. But, Dad couldn't
translate fast enough to wing it - so the General give his revised
speech and Dad read the prepared speech.
After it was over, De Gaulle's translator said "Durham,
I don't know where you learned your French ... but you didn't get
any thing right." Dad explained what had happened and De Gaulle's
translator said well, not to worry, the speech that Dad translated
was better!
<YESTERDAY |TOMORROW>
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