Locust Valley, French counterpart revive D-Day link

Veterans Day is for remembering sacrifice. But how many people really do?

Not nearly enough.

That became clear Thursday at a Veterans Day ceremony outside the Locust Valley library.

The crowd contained a mixture of old and young. And a special guest, Maurice Renaud of St.-Mère-Eglise, France, who helped lay a wreath of remembrance at the local veterans monument. Nearly every town and hamlet across Long Island has such a monument, many with the names of local citizens who served in our wars etched on them, going back, in some cases, to the Civil War. As Americans, we want to honor our warriors.

Renaud's mother, Simone, always remembered the legions of young American men who parachuted into her town on D-Day, June 6, 1944, the very first day of Europe's liberation from the Nazis. So many of them died as she and her children, along with other townspeople, fled for their own safety.

In the days after, they watched Americans bury their dead in three cemeteries in and near the town. She saw the reverence for the dead in the ritual of burying a soldier.

St.-Mère-Eglise was made famous by the movie "The Longest Day," a star-studded 1962 film. Locust Valley has special reason to remember D-Day because the history of St.-Mère-Eglise - the first village liberated in France by the Allies - is tied so closely to the community's own.

Beginning in 1947, Locust Valley residents - through a local program called Operation Democracy - sent food, medicine and clothing to St.-Mère-Eglise.

It was a gesture that Maurice Renaud, now 68, remembers vividly. But, until five years ago, the operation had been largely forgotten in Locust Valley.

That changed when filmmaker Doug Stebleton, who lives in Los Angeles, was in France researching a documentary on Simone Renaud. He discovered a seven-stanza poem she had written, titled "Locust Valley." He mentioned the find to friends in the United States, who told him that Locust Valley was on Long Island.

In 2005, Maurice Renaud made his first trip to Locust Valley, where he met Isabella Breasted, the daughter of a founder of Operation Democracy. Stebleton filmed their meeting. The two talked of chocolate: Maurice said he loved receiving it in packages from Locust Valley; Isabella said she remembered begging her mother not to pack so much to send to the French village.

In 2007, Locust Valley unveiled a monument commemorating the unique tie between the sister towns. In 2008, the community revived Operation Democracy, which now has local schoolchildren raising money to send to communities in war-torn countries, of which there is no shortage.

Thursday, the public got its first look at Stebleton's completed documentary, "Mother of Normandy, The Story of Simone Renaud," during a screening at the public library.

The modest crowd clapped when the film told the story of Locust Valley. One woman took pictures of the screen. And once the film ended, more than one resident appeared stunned that Maurice Renaud - who makes frequent appearances in the film, beginning as a child - was sitting among them.

One of those surprised to meet him was Jeff Converse, 59, who - inspired by "The Longest Day" - has made two trips to St.-Mère-Eglise, where the memory of Simone Renaud, who spent years writing to the families of felled soldiers and years more welcoming veterans back to the town, lives on. Simone Renaud died in 1988.

"I am so sorry that I never had a chance to meet your mother," Converse told Maurice Renaud. "She was an extraordinary woman." But even Converse knew little about the link between the communities.

"The memories, the people, the history should never be lost," he said. "They are more than something on a monument for us to look at and say, 'That's interesting,' and then walk away."

Indeed.