He was born in Reims on 11 October 1886.
Become very young orphan of father and mother, he was taken in by an uncle from Epernay .
At thirteen he worked as a glassblower .
With her wife Lucy, my grandmother, they had five children, including the eldest named Jean was to die in his first year .
After the Great War he was hired at the Metro, at the RATP, where he remained until retirement.
He the child of Ardennes descended into Champagne had become Parisian.
After having inhabited rue du Chemin Vert in Boulogne, during the thirties the couple and their four children moved to boulevard Murat, in a large apartment that they had to give up for acts of war , after the bombing of the factories Renault nearby which damaged the building.
The family was relocated rue de la Corrèze near the site of the old fortifications in the 19th century arrondissement .
It's here, Street Correze, that I was impressed by a garbage truck that fell into a gigantic excavation that had opened up in the middle of the roadway .
I was afraid of this grandfather who glared at me and scolded me .
Like that time I tore the living room wallpaper into little strips, this room where mum was to give birth to my sister on 13 February 1945 .
I admired the Westminster chime that rang every half hour above the armchair of grandfather .
Because he was often in his chair, Grandpa Danube, as I called it because the nearest metro station was Danube, which allowed me to differentiate from my other grandfather, Grandpa Frugères .
And he was in his chair, Grandpa Danube, because his legs hurt 18 May 1955.
We had to besides cutting off his leg shortly before he died .
I had gone to his funeral with my parents. On the way back from the cemetery in the bus which brought us back to Porte de Pantin, I felt grandpa's presence Danube. It was as if he was telling me important things that I didn't. didn't understand then ; it had given me chills and a trace of this event remains in me today. I was nine years old then , and I do not have never again forgot his presence as a gruff man with whom I could not exchange .
On the photos he has a good look in a face with soft features, him the silent one who nevertheless could fly into tantrums that terrified me.
Right here, It is photographed in Jouy in the Eure , with his woolen waistcoat and his eternal beret who hides his baldness he shows an affable attitude in front of Louise's house , his wife's sister , Lucia my grandmother , and Léon the former gamekeeper, Louise's husband .
Some time previously, on the return from the long holidays spent as every year in frugeres, we came back by train, mom, my sister and me, at 75 Street Saint Charles at Grenelle.
And there, surprise ! Our kitchen wallpaper, which was at the same time living room and bathroom, had been redone. And it was my daddy who did that, and he did it with his father, Grandpa Danube.
The room was beaming with sunshine on this late summer day ….. and still today a light persists to our heart's content.
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