When a young, ambitious Nashua businessman and several peers sat down with a group of Manchester Franco-American friends a half-century ago to talk about a new community service club, one thing they didn’t have to worry about was identifying a demographic from which to draw members.

That’s because in the 1960s, finding French-speaking people in Nashua was akin to finding Southern accents at a NASCAR race or
pot at a Grateful Dead show. If you walked the length of Main Street and didn’t
hear anyone speaking French, you weren’t listening.

The new venture would be named Le Club Richelieu, though “Le” is rarely used today, some 50 years after Franco-American Nashuans such as Emile Chagnon Jr., Gerard Bergeron, Dr. Omer Caron, Roland Larose, Paul E. Beaulieu and attorney Louis Janelle held the first meetings of the new Nashua club.

On Monday, Chagnon, retired from the family lumber business and still an active Richelieu member, will hand out nearly $20,000 to several local social services agencies during a luncheon kicking off the club’s golden anniversary year.

Among the beneficiaries will be the Institute of French Studies, now part of St. Anselm College, President Chris Yanco said. The institute is geared toward “carrying on our Franco-American heritage, our culture,” she said.

Some other groups receiving donations are the Nashua Soup Kitchen & Shelter, the Tolles Street Mission and the Corpus Christi food pantry.

For Chagnon, joining Richelieu was the answer to his longing to reacquaint himself with the language he spoke while growing up in Nashua.

“I always spoke French at home, and we had (French) classes in school back then,” Chagnon said. “But after four years at the University of New Hampshire and four more in the Air Force, I kind of lost it.”

Apparently, not speaking or hearing even your native language on a regular basis can make you a little rusty.

“That’s the main reason I joined,” Chagnon said. “I needed to hear people speaking French again.”

He recalls one rather embarrassing incident around that time that confirmed he made the right choice.

“My two boys went to school at St. Francis Xavier, and one day a teacher got them interested in piano lessons,” Chagnon said. “Eventually, there was some kind of recital or show they were going to be part of, and the teacher asked me if I would be the master of ceremonies.

“I said, ‘Sure, I’d be happy to.’ But right before it started, they said, ‘You know this is all in French, right?’?”

Chagnon laughs. “I stumbled over words, stammered a lot. It was very embarrassing. People probably wondered what was wrong with me.”

With new members joining Club Richelieu regularly, Chagnon redeemed himself as the fluent Francophonie (French-speaking person) he once was.

For Yanco, a retired Nashua teacher, the desire to reinvigorate her long-dormant involvement in Nashua’s French community was sparked by recent news stories about the city’s prominent Labine family. Though residing for years on Labine Street, Yanco realized she never learned much about the family.

“All these years living there and teaching in Nashua, for some reason I never heard much about them. I got really interested when The Telegraph did those stories,” Yanco said, referring to the series of Telegraph articles about family patriarch Joseph Labine and the historic “flat-iron”-style brick building named for him in 1900.

The stories appeared about three years ago in the wake of the devastating fire that led to the demise of the 110-year-old landmark.

Few lamented that more than Alan S. Manoian, an urban planner and former downtown development specialist for the city.

“Not only is it an outstanding example of Romanesque Revival architecture, it is also the city’s only flat-iron building,” he said at the time.

Though the landmark would meet its demise, Club Richelieu benefited from Yanco’s interest in its history.

“I jumped right in after I retired from teaching. It went from, ‘Hey, can you take a few notes?’ to, ‘Hey, you want to be the president?’?” she said with a laugh.

Yanco’s Franco-American roots go back to World War II-era Belgium, where her father, Nashua native Lawrence Messier, was a French-English interpreter during the war.

One day, Yanco said, a woman who would one day become her grandmother chased her father, asking –
as natives often did of American GIs – for candy for their kids.

“He didn’t have any, but said he’d come back with some, and he did,” Yanco said. “My mother was there, they met, and soon she was a war bride.”

A Telegraph feature article in 1947 tells the story of Lawrence and Ann Messier and their daughters, Christine and Lauren.

As for Richelieu, plenty of highly recognizable names have come through its ranks over the years.

Some, besides Chagnon, are the late Maurice “Maury” Parent, a radio legend known as “the Voice of the Merrimack Valley”; former Rivier professor Eric Drouart, a native of France who helped lead Richelieu’s resurgence several years ago; Lee Caron, an original member; Bishop Guertin High School French Club adviser Bob Goyette; and other key leaders such as Gerard Michaud, Cecile Pelissier, Gerard Bergeron, Raymond Lamothe, Bob Soucy and Joseph “John” Michaud.

Stay tuned for Richelieu announcements; the club will play a major role again this year in Nashua’s Week of the Francophonie in the spring, and look for a 50th anniversary celebration featuring musician Josie Vachon.

Dean Shalhoup’s column appears Saturdays in The Telegraph. He can be reached at 594-6443 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com. Also, follow Shalhoup on Twitter (@Telegraph_DeanS).