June 14 has special significance for my family

This Saturday, June 14, our nation celebrates Flag Day, a day in which we honor the history of the American flag and celebrate the patriotic bonds that the famous banner engenders.

Our own American Legion Post, Robert Boyd Steward Post 11, will hold a flag retirement ceremony at the downtown veterans memorial park Saturday, during which frayed and tattered flags are respectfully retired by being burned. It’s a meaningful event, with the history of the American Flag to be presented during the ceremony.

For my family, however, June 14 is special in another way. It’s the date my parents met in Paris in the aftermath of World War II. We call it Vendome Day.

In June of 1945, my father was stationed in liberated Paris as a soldier with the 84^th Infantry Division, known as the Railsplitters. He had come ashore at Normandy – not on D-Day but a bit later, fought through the Battle of the Bulge and reached the Elbe River as the Russians advanced from the East.

After Victory in Europe Day, May 8, when the Nazis surrendered, the 84^th was sent to Paris, and while stationed there, my father, Roy, by chance encounter, met the love of his life, Margaret MacFadyen of Duluth, Minnesota.

As the story goes, Dad and a couple buddies – officers all -- were driving in Paris when they spotted some Red Cross girls on the sidewalk. My mother had graduated from the University of Minnesota and felt moved to help the “boys” who were fighting in the war and, thus, joined the American Red Cross.

So Roy Peck and his buddies spied the Red Cross girls and pulled over to ask directions to the officer’s mess. Now, they had just come from the officer’s mess, which was installed at the Ritz Hotel, but what better way to meet some pretty young ladies than asking directions?

Mom and her comrades dutifully got out their maps to show the way to the mess, which our family finds humorous because Mom couldn’t read a map to save her life. As they did so, Dad and the others said, “Why don’t you just hop in with us, and we’ll go find it.”

Mom happened to sit down next to my father, who stuck out his hand and said, “Hello, I’m Roy Peck. I’m from Riverton, Wyoming.” And the rest is history. Roy and Margaret fell madly in love and were married in Duluth on June 26, 1946, just over a year later. 

Why Vendome Day? Place Vendome is a famous square in Paris with a tall column erected in 1806-10 to the glory of Napoleon to commemorate his victory in the Battle of Austerlitz and made from the melting of 1,200 canons taken from the vanquished Austrians and Russians. The square is adjacent to the Ritz Hotel.

Place Vendome has been so iconic in family history that my mother and father always celebrated Vendome Day, the day they met, rather than their wedding anniversary.

This Saturday marks the 80^th anniversary of Vendome Day, that chance meeting in Paris in 1945, and I will not only salute our American flag, I will salute my parents, who served their country 80 years ago.