Courtesy photo A family photo showing Nashua native Jeannette Lafrance in uniform while serving with the WAC at the end of World War II. Lafrance went on to become a "trailblazer" for women in service to the country. (Courtesy photo)

Not too long ago, a Nashua native, born one of 12 children to one of the many large, Franco-American families that populated the section of Nashua we now call “The Tree Streets” neighborhood, took a little vacation to see the sights of the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.

Alice (Lafrance) Plautz, who has been living in Wisconsin for years now, carried memories of one of her sisters along on that trip, and now and then, she took time to look around, and sometimes ask around, hoping someone was familiar with the name Jeannette Lafrance.

But she came up empty, and even after she returned home and got back to business as usual, the sense of disappointment lingered for Alice Plautz, who fairly recently became the lone survivor of her 11 siblings upon the passing of her sister, Cecile Picard.

Plautz would soon share her disappointment with family members, one of whom is Karen Taylor, a Portsmouth resident and one of Plautz’s – and Jeannette Lafrance’s – nieces.

“She did not see any recognition of her sister’s service at any of the expected locations. She was troubled by this,” Taylor told me recently, referring to recent conversations with her Aunt Alice about Alice’s trip to Washington.

Courtesy photo Military personnel, including a group of Women's Army Corps veterans, took part in Jeannette Lafrance's graveside services at St. Louis Cemetery in Nashua in 1954. (Courtesy photo)

This is where you could inject cliches like “timing is everything” or “then it all just fell into place” or “the stars must have been aligned just right,” and so on.

I don’t pretend to subscribe to any of those theories, but what I do know, thanks to Plautz, Taylor and a slew of cooperative and very helpful folks at home and abroad, is that Jeannette Lafrance’s distinguished service to her country in the post?(-)World War II era is now, at last, being recognized – and celebrated – both at home and half a world away.

“Jeannette Lafrance was definitely a trailblazer in the U.S. Foreign Service,” Mark Marrano, the deputy consul general at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, wrote to me last week.

Indeed, in a time when young women fresh out of high school typically sought positions as secretaries, telephone operators, or housewives, Jeannette Lafrance set her sights on far more distant horizons, first joining the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), serving in the South Pacific toward the end of the war, then launching a career with the U.S. Foreign Service.

That career, and Lafrance’s life, were tragically cut way too short in March of 1954, when she was found dead in her Cairo hotel room.

Courtesy photo Jeannette Lafrance, her parents and siblings gather in this family photo taken in the late 1940s or early 50s. In front at left is Ina Abood; behind her is Irene Taylor, next to her is Cecile (Picard) Duquette, and the rest are, from left, Jeannette, George, Paul, Rachel, Joseph, Leon, and Alice, who is holding daughter Alice Plautz. (Courtesy photo)

The cause of Lafrance’s death – she was just 32 – was ruled accidental, according to Taylor and clippings of Nashua Telegraph stories at the time.

Taylor said it may have had something to do with a faulty gas connection. To Lafrance’s close-knit family and a slew of old-Nashua friends, it was a tragic loss.

Lafrance died 67 years ago this month, on March 18, 1954, a date that is now just about in the middle of Women’s History Month. It’s a coincidence that makes honoring the life and career of Jeannette Lafrance that much more appropriate.

According to Taylor, once she learned from her Aunt Alice that she was unable to find anything that memorialized Jeannette Lafrance, she reached out to government agencies and was eventually put in touch with State Department historians, she said.

A very helpful historian forwarded the material Taylor provided to the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, where it landed in the hands of Marrano, the deputy consul general.

Courtesy photo A family photo of Jeannette Lafrance, a Nashua native who is being honored this month for her World War II-era State Department service. (Courtesy photo)

“Mark said this is a really interesting story,” Taylor said. “He said they’d like to honor her during Women’s History Month. I was very excited he reached out,” she added.

What appears to be the first mention of Jeannette Lafrance in our predecessor-in-name, The Nashua Telegraph, is a brief February 1947 article that states she was working for the State Department in Washington D.C. and had just accepted an assignment at the American Embassy in Warsaw, Poland.

Lafrance, according to a July 1949 Telegraph story, would then spend roughly two years working “behind the Iron Curtain,” a reference to the former Soviet Union’s political, military and ideological barrier that separated the Communist bloc and Western civilization in the post?(-)World War II era.

As a matter of fact, when she was assigned to the Warsaw post, Lafrance became the first American woman to go behind the Iron Curtain since World War II.

The late John Barry, then a Telegraph reporter, interviewed Lafrance while she was home on leave that summer, in which she shared her experiences visiting several European countries that still bore the scars of war.

Dean Shalhoup

Longtime reporter, columnist and photographer, is back doing what he does best ñ chronicling the people and history of Nashua. Reaching 40 years with The Telegraph in September, Deanís insights have a large, appreciative following.

Poland, where she was stationed, was perhaps the most devastated of all. “Most of Poland was still very much in ruins, and to enjoy any sort of vacation, we had to go to other countries,” Lafrance told Barry.

So many buildings were destroyed by enemy bombs, she said, that there seemed to be construction going on everywhere.

Lafrance praised the Polish citizens for their work ethic. “The people work like fanatics … but they are working under the handicap of an extreme shortage of building materials,” she observed.

Several languages were spoken in Poland and throughout the region, Lafrance said, adding that she learned enough Polish to get by.

“Many tongues can be hard in the streets of Warsaw … even German, when absolutely necessary. The Poles certainly have no love for the Germans,” she said.

Upon her passing, the Cairo embassy coordinated with U.S. officials for the return home to Nashua of Lafrance’s body.

Following her funeral services, she was buried at St. Louis Cemetery.

Taylor, meanwhile, says that although her aunt died several years before she was born, it was almost like she knew her growing up.

“The family thought a lot of Jeannette, she was always talked about,” Taylor said. “She was really a lovely person … she was a lot of fun to be around.

“I feel like I knew her all this time.”

Dean Shalhoup’s column appears weekly in The Sunday Telegraph. He may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.

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