Features

In early February 1966, Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, Director of Selective Service (Draft), and his wife were our dinner guests at our quarters at the San Diego Marine Base. Appointed as head of the Selective Service System by President Roosevelt in 1940, Hershey had become the longest-serving director in the history of the Selective Service System, spanning World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.

Working for the “Brute”

AUTHOR’S NOTE: In the Friday, Nov. 6, issue I republished the first of my two-part series about Maj. General J. Franklin Bell that appeared in The Sentinel-News in 2008. Winner of the Medal of Honor in the “Philippine Insurrection,” he was Shelby County’s greatest hero and highest ranked military officer. It seems timely on Veterans Day to republish the second part.

It had been a privilege to serve for two years, 1955-57, in Japan, under the command of a distinguished and capable four-star general, Lyman L. Lemnitzer. As his Headquarters Commandant, I had under my command the all-services Honor Guard, which was turned out to welcome senior officers, American and foreign, who visited my “boss.”

In late 1948, Susanne and I announced our engagement. Susanne’s mother, the Marquise de Charette, issued a very proper engraved invitations for a wedding on January 7, 1949.

However, during a Christmas visit with my parents in San Diego, I had developed reservations about a marriage, in which I would suddenly assume the responsibilities not only of husband, but of father, as well. Upon my arrival back in New York, I asked Susanne for more time to consider. Later, she recalled her reaction: “It made me practically ill. Van got cold feet!”

After Susanne’s divorce from Chunky Marshall, her mother, the Marquise de Charette, and her great aunt, Lulie Henning, who lived in a large apartment at 400 Park Avenue, accompanied her to Miami Beach for the birth of Michele (Mimi) Solange Marshall on July 23, 1946.

They then returned with mother and daughter, and Susanne rented an apartment in nearby Mt. Vernon, New York.

Henri Bendel’s on Fifth Avenue

30 Ans de Diners en Ville

An incisive appraisal of Susanne, Marquise de Charette appears in a chapter of Gabriel-Louis Pringué’s, 30 Ans de Diners en Ville [Paris] (30 Years of Dining in the City).

Pringué, an uncle of a Paris schoolmate of the Marquise’s daughter, Susanne, asked me many years ago if I had ever been to “Maxim’s.” Upon receiving a negative answer, he responded immediately “Quelle Vierge!”

In 30 Ans, Pringué described the Marquise:

General Baron de Charette died on October 9, 1911, at the age of 79.  His widow, Tennessee-born Antoinette, Baronne de Charette, continued to live at La Basse Motte in Brittany. Here during World War I she entertained American troops on leave from the Western Front.  After her death on February 3, l9l9, her obituary in a Nashville paper closed with this tribute:

If there is one thing in the world that I have always thought I could be without in the family and economize was a French Marquis.

– Sue T. Henning

In 1851, James Williamson Henning, Sr. (1813-1886), a surveyor and civil engineer who had made one of the early maps of Louisville, formed a partnership with his brother-in-law, Joshua Fry Speed (1814-1882). Speed, who had previously been Abraham Lincoln’s law partner in Springfield, Ill., was Lincoln’s best friend. After he became president, Lincoln asked both Speed and Henning to serve in his cabinet, an honor they both declined.