Artist solves mystery.

For years the identity of this man in the photo remained a mystery. Her son Pol often wondered who this young GI was and set about to find his name. His persistence would pay off. He knew that one of the men was an artist who had made a colored drawing of his mother during their stay.

During their stay the Laroche-Gaviny's had noticed a young soldier making drawings of the men in his unit and asked Ole Olin if he would do a drawing for them. Ole asked his commanding officer if it would possible for him to do so. He wasn’t sure what response he would get to his request, but to his surprise the officer said yes. He told Ole that it was the least they could do to repay the Laroche-Gaviny's for their hospitality and he sure didn’t want to go back to sleeping outdoors as it was a cold part of the year.

So the link was made to Ole because the family knew of the unit and the man who had done the painting and a mystery was about to be solved.  

Through some research he was put in touch with Eldon ‘Ole’ Olin who was a young man in this group of soldiers and had made many sketches of the other men in his unit.

Ole dug through his portfolio of drawings as he knew he had drawn a sketch of this fellow and found the man with Pol’s mother..  The GI (H. J. DeAntonio) had signed his print, so Ole was able to send this young man from Luxembourg the information he wanted.  

And so from a sketch a name was found to go with the photo and the mystery was solved for Susie’s son.

 But that is not the end of the story. A few days ago we received an email from Pol in Luxembourg and attached to that email was the colored drawing Ole had made long ago and had not seen since.

Sisy in the dress she wore for the oil painting.

Arthur lives in a retirement apartment in the building General George Patton used as his headquarters during WWII. As you can see he has the oil painting  of his lovely wife on his wall.

Sisy and her parents

BEIM WOONER

Suzanne and Arthur

SISY LAROCHE

The picture offered by  Eldon Olin.

Frank Marks gave this drawing to my father

May 2003, 30th in the  Tavern "CAFE DE L'ARRÊT" 365, RTE DeLongwy- Luxembourg

circa WWII

A PICTURE OF MY MOTHER

TAKEN IN 1944/45

 IN FRONT OF THE TAVERN

Today

Some additional notes:

Frank Marks an army buddy of Ole's went over in 2003 to visit with Pol, Susie's son, with his wife Rachel, and their daughter Marilyn. They traveled the route of Co. B. 33rd Signal Const. Battalion. throughout Europe and Luxembourg City, where their outfit stayed in the back of the Tavern owned by the LaRouche-Giveney family, for the latter part of December 1944 through the first two weeks of January 1945, while snow was on the ground.

While there, Sisy's Mother, who did not speak English, and had seen Ole drawing some of the men in his outfit, asked Sisy to ask Ole if he would draw Sisy's picture, which he did, then Sisy's mother asked Sisy to ask Ole if he could put it in color, and that is when he did the oil.  He had to ask his commanding officer first, and that's when the commanding officer told him to go ahead and paint it, as it was the least they could do, for getting to sleep in the dry of their tavern.

Some additional information sent to us from Pol:

The exact name of my grand parents is: Laroche-Gaviny.

My mother's name first name is Suzanne called Sisy. ( the G.I.s obviously changed this to Susie)

The tavern is located in a suburb of Luxembourg-City. The suburb's name is Merl.

The exact address of the tavern:

Cafe de l'Arret

365 route de Longwy

L-1941 Luxembourg-Merl

Webmaster's note:

This was during the Battle of the Bulge. General Patton is buried in the U.S. Military Cemetery in Luxembourg. 2004 is the sixtieth anniversary of this historic battle fought over a 60 mile wide area where Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg meet.