Born in New York to a French family, Michelle lived in both Massachusetts and Anchorage, Alaska before returning to France at the age of 11. Three years later, she met Philippe – whom she eventually married. Decades later, their two grown children both moved to North America: their daughter to Montreal, Canada, and their son, Gregory, to Malibu.
Michelle spent most of her professional life teaching English to chemists at the University of Strasbourg in France. She is also a talented artist. Over the years, nearly all of her siblings had moved from France to LA – so when she and Philippe retired a couple years ago, they moved to Malibu to be near family.
Michelle and Philippe lost their home in the Woolsey Fire; and so did their son, Gregory; daughter-in-law Geraldine, and two grandchildren, who lived nearby (interviewed separately elsewhere in this book).
As a child, Michelle and her family were living in Anchorage right before the ‘Great Alaskan Earthquake’ in 1964 – a 9.2 quake that killed 131 people. Her mother had a premonition that something terrible was going to happen. “She’s kind of psychic and booked overnight plane tickets for everybody, flying us back to France two days before the earthquake struck,” Michelle said. “My Mom stuck two summer dresses (even though it was winter) and two Barbie dolls in my suitcase, and that’s it. Everything else was lost.
“Then two years ago, my mother said, ‘Here are photos of you as a child’ and handed me a packet. I said, ‘Wait a minute, what’s up? I thought everything was lost in the earthquake.’ She said, ‘These are photos I had with me because I was going to send them to my mother.’ Michelle brought the photos back to Malibu.
The morning of the Woolsey fire, Michelle was in Huntington Beach attending a seminar. Philippe called and said they had to evacuate and asked her what to take. “I sat on my hotel bed thinking about what things I didn’t want to lose,” Michelle said. “I mentally went through each room and told him, ‘Take this, this and this,’ including the family photos. He packed the cashmere sweaters and dresses I told him, but none of the shoes that went with them. Now I have to go back to France and buy shoes (I’m joking)!
“But this is really what I have that is the most precious: for each grandchild, I made a notebook of my sketches and watercolors, along with handwritten stories. Each grandchild has one: I start it when they’re born and stop when they turn three years old – but then don’t give it to them until they’re 18. I told my son those notebooks should be the first thing he takes; and he put them in the car at 3:00 am.
“Eliot, my grandson, had done eight paintings with me and he took them; my son, Gregory, is also a painter and he took almost all of his paintings. They saved the art that was irreplaceable.
“My husband didn’t take anything for himself – he didn’t believe the house would burn. He just took house papers and complicated international tax papers and went to Gregory’s.”
Now that the house is gone, Michelle is not up for rebuilding. “I don’t want to stay in Malibu because we can’t afford it. Our insurance was okay; we were renting out a third of our house, but with our French retirement pensions, you can’t make it here. I don’t really want to rebuild or have a tenant to make ends meet. Besides: even if we hadn’t lost the house in the fire, we would’ve lost it to the mud flows that happened later.”
Michelle is now able to tell a wonderful tale of the packet of French family photos that managed to survive two major natural catastrophes during her lifetime: the Woolsey Fire and the Great Alaskan Earthquake of 1964. “I told my husband over the phone the day of the fire, ‘Please take that bag of photos.’ So they survived twice.”
