Parisians enjoy spring weather at Place des Vosges in Le Marais during the Junior Year in France program's Cinquantenaire in March.
Mark B. Whitehill '76: Une année scolaire pas comme les autres
An incredible year punctuated by incredible events. My roommate in Biarritz and for much of my time in Paris has become a lifelong friend (Owen Griesemer from Wittenberg University). In Biarritz we put on Eugène Ionescu's absurdist drama, La Cantatrice chauve, for our host families, pre-recording the dialogue to add to the play's surreal nature. I and Florida beauty Marilyn Skinner were "married" in a Basque ceremony in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port; for our "honeymoon" we hitchhiked from Biarritz across southern France to the principality of Andorra. We would get lifts only when I hid in the bushes and emerged after the driver had already stopped upon seeing Marilyn!
In Paris, Owen and I had to switch families midstream owing to difficulties with the apartment covenants. We were then separated; I moved from the 9eme to the 11emearrondissement, right next to the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise (where amid all the French notables, American pop icon Jim Morrison is interred). My second family of Mme de Lannurien was a single-parent household with two daughters, a young adult and a teenager, who often made fun of my French but who turned to me for sympathy regarding their failed romances.
I received expert language instruction from Mme Peyrollaz of the Institut Britannique and was tutored by Jean-Didier Sicault during my time at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques. He helped me negotiate the rigors of "Sciences Po" and assisted in the selection of my thesis on Le Sahara occidental. I recall that a year-long course at Sciences Po on Afrique du Nord was graded solely on the basis of a 15-minute oral exam by Jean Lacouture, among France's most renowned journalists. Talk about intimidating!
While in Paris I purchased a Fiat 128 hors taxes, which took me and friends on many wonderful adventures — to the D-Day beaches at Normandy, to Mont-Saint-Michel, to Nice for Mardi Gras, to Sweden on winter break, to Morocco during spring break, to Berlin, and, in the summer, to the Shah's Iran — overland through Eastern Europe and Turkey (where I found a puppy, christened "Turk," that with great difficulty I was able send home to my family in New York). Turk attended Hamilton with me for my senior year.
Finally, I will always remember the year abroad for the compassionate stewardship of Director Marcel Moraud, who made Reid Hall a second home for all program participants. Hamilton, je vous remercie!
Mark B.Whitehill '76 returned from Paris to the Hill with little extra baggage — dog, Turk, and Fiat 128, purchased on the Champs Elysées. The car "took me and friends on many wonderful adventures," he says — "to the D-Day beaches at Normandy, to Mont-Saint-Michel, to Nice for Mardi Gras, to Sweden on winter break, to Morocco during spring break, to Berlin, and, in the summer to the Shah's Iran overland through Eastern Europe and Turkey." Whitehill shipped it home for $250 and kept it until 1978; Turk fared much better, living until 1987.
