Features

General Baron Athanase Charles-Marin de Charette (1796-1848)

At the royal court, Louise, Comtesse de Vierzon, granddaughter of Charles X of France, met a gallant cavalier, Athanase-Charles-Marin de Charette, (1796-1848), Chef d’escadron aux Chasseurs de la Garde Royal (Commander of the light cavalry squadron of the Royal Guard).

Our good friends in France, Jean-Michel and Guillemette Dunoyer de Segonzac, drove us to General de Charette’s Chateau de la Basse Motte in Chateuneuf, six miles west of St Malo, which Susanne had inherited from her mother, the Marquise de Charette, in 1964.

One day in February 1961, while serving on the staff of the 2nd Marine Division at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, I received an urgent summons from Maj. Gen. Phil Berkeley, the Division Commander. I wondered what I had done wrong this time!

It turned out that the general’s growing dissatisfaction with his chief of staff’s performance had dramatically overcome his tolerance. He had abruptly ordered him to clear out his desk and get out.

Suddenly the Chief of Staff

AUTHOR’S NOTE: As Veterans Day approaches it seems timely to publish again my story of Shelby County’s greatest hero and highest ranked military officer, Medal of Honor winner, Major General J. Franklin Bell. This column, the first of a two-part series, appeared in the Sentinel-News on August 6, 2008.

I embarked aboard the naval transport, “USS J. Franklin Bell,” on 10 December 1942 for participation in amphibious training exercises off the coast of California in preparation for combat in the Pacific.

In the summer of 1952, having been promoted to Colonel during two years of sea duty, I was ordered to take command of the Marine Barracks of the Naval Training Center, Great Lakes. Illinois.  There Susanne and I were assigned spacious government quarters in one of the beautiful old homes on “Brick Row.” 

Shortly after the birth of our second son, Charles Antoine, in March 1954,I was ordered on an unaccompanied tour (without family) with the Third Marine Division in Gifu, Japan.

Mike Harman grinned as he walked back toward his raptor facility in his backyard.

“I’m known around Shelbyville as the guy with the bird in the car,” he said.

Stepping inside his workshop, he withdrew a Cooper’s hawk – somewhat unwillingly – from its cage.

On June 29, 1933, Sue Henning, while visiting a friend in Washington, D. C., suffered an apoplectic stroke, from which she did not regain consciousness. For her daughter Susanne, still in Capri, and her granddaughter Susanne, then 18, still in school in Switzerland, it was a race against time. They arrived at her bedside before she died on July 12, 1933.

In July 1924, having spent over three years in Kentucky, Susanne, now nine, returned to Paris with her mother, the Marquise de Charette. Her schooling, which had begun at Nazareth Academy, near Bardstown, Kentucky, would continue in France and in Switzerland.

Cours Dupanloup in Paris

On November 10, 1911 James W. (Will) Henning suffered a second and final failure, losing his seat on the New York Stock Exchange. This was a disaster from which he never recovered.

Despite his estranged wife Sue Henning’s opposition in 1909 to the marriage of their daughter, it must have given her some pride. She started a scrapbook about this time, the first items being newspaper clippings of the prominent New York wedding of her only child, Susanne, and Marquis Antoine de Charette.