Updated 05/18/10

Ecole Internationale St Maur-Chateauroux

Located near Chateauroux, France

M. Georges Dementhon was the Founder and Director of the International School.  His son, Alain Dementhon, has written his father's biography (in french).  The book can be purchased by cutting and pasting this link.  

 http://www.thebookedition.com/product_info.php?products_id=7996&panier=add

ANTHONY, Lisa (Burghardt) - 1975 Little Kid    
@ Chad:  60-63
1-8-06  Kathy Anthony, class of 1961, is my sister. I attended the International School in kindergarten-First Grade. My older brother, Paul attended too. Have great memories of the french bread and chocolate at the end of each school day and Balsan Park.

ANTHONY, Paul - brother of Lisa & Kathy 

 

Bonjour , Je suis Annie Forté mon nom de jeune fille est Annie Boucrot je me rappelle bien de ma meilleure amie " Marion " .J'ai un souvenir de mon anniversaire fêté dans ma maison à Châteauroux où Marion , Mariane Fisher et Karen Dellinger étaient invitées , je dois avoir des photos mais il faut que je recherche dans mes cartons ! A bientôt Annie {

Regina BRÖCKER (Brocker)

CARTER, L. Susan - Little Kid - 1968 @ Chad 1958-64 - 4th Grade - Mr. Foster's Class - Lycee Internationale

[Lycee Internationale] It opened classes the fall of 1962 in an old chateau in St Maur, about four miles out of Chateauroux. I was in the 5eme classes the first year, along with Francine Auster, and then in the 4eme the next year (1963-64).

The lycee was a remarkable learning environment, operating in  combination of buildings that included the chateau as well as pre-fab buildings scattered on the sides of the great pelouse, the lawn that sloped away from the building. The polyglot of languages was impressive, and provided me my first opportunity to meet Muslim students as some of the pupils were children of Turkish officers at the NATO base. I recall Elizabeth Larsen and her sister from Denmark, as well as the Tillisch sisters.  [jpnote:  See entry above.] Gisela and her brother Bernard were from Germany. Tracy Carpenter, an American, was enrolled as well, along with Candace Crowley, who was quite a young horsewoman, jumping at the time, as I recall.

Mr. Foster taught there, as well as M. and Mme Marteau from the French lycee.

The school was not without its difficulties. The first winter, there was an outbreak of Hepatitis B that left some students ill and sent the rest of us for vaccines at the base.

I have returned to the school twice. Once in 1987, when I found it in substantial disrepair, and again in 2000, when it was back in great form, windows repaired and the whole place gleaming (school was out).

I thank my education there for much that has taken place since. When we were students there, Mr. Foster taught us a song, only part of which I remember, that contained the words "... may we remember what we were like in our youth and our day."

JP found this info on the web.  Susan (being the modest lady she obviously is) never mentioned her accomplishments.  Congratulations, Susan!
[jpnote taken from MSU Website:    "[Susan was appointed secretary of the Board of Trustees and executive assistant to the president of Michigan State University, effective Jan. 1, 2002.]
    [She] has served as associate professor of journalism since 1997. She received a bachelor's degree in humanities in 1984 from MSU and master's and law degrees from Wayne State University. She is a member of numerous universitywide and College of Communication Arts and Sciences committees, and professional organizations.
    At MSU she teaches broadcasting, media law, journalism history and an introductory survey course; she teaches at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. She has conducted research in the areas of interdisciplinary approaches in journalism education, teaching research ethics, improving relations with the fifth estate and women's access to broadcasting. She has served as an adjunct professor at MSU-Detroit College of Law and has taught at Wayne State University and Northern High School in Detroit.
    She has received several research grants from the United States and Canada, including a Michigan Women's Foundation research grant to produce and distribute a computer game for girls based on Polar Trek 2001, which she led in April. She has also served as a member of Faculty Council and Academic Council in MSU's academic governance system. Her service in the media involves membership on various editorial boards and panels, including broadcast education coordinator for the 2000 "Push the Edges," a yearlong seminar for Detroit-area journalists funded by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and the Ford Foundation.

KOEPKE, Mike -  Atlanta, GA  - email unavailable
@ Chad:  65-66
7-23-05  Incredible.  I can't believe this.  I attended the International School as a second grader.  I have to get my years right.  I was born in 1958 and I remember we were shipped out to Germany at the end of that year as France left NATO.  I guess that puts me in 65-66.  I have no school photos, but I still have several notebooks with the plastic covers for school lessons.  I do remember having a class photo from Touvent School in the first grade.  I will dig it up.

International School memories: Best Friend was Norwegian. Phonetic spelling of name was "Jell Huwald".  Greek friend named Oliver. Rode bus everyday from Touvent.  Smell of diesel.  Usually scared to death.   Played marbles in the dirt.  Steelies were coveted.   Grand lunches in an old house.  Blood sausage, fish with mountains of butter. Yuk.  We would stuff our food into hollowed out French bread and smuggle it out.  This was the only way to get the little chocolate bar.

Incredible site.  Keep up the good work. Mike Koepke Atlanta, Georgia

KUHMANN, Marion 

9-8-08  I was so suprised to find this page on the internet. I remember the french name of my school was "Lycée Jean Giroudoux". I was born 1956 in germany and attended the international school in the chateau in chateauroux from 1962-1967.   My best friend was Annie Boucrot. And my first boyfriend was Tru(h)n from Norway. Annie´s boyfriend was Sébastian. David was a member of the "Boyscouts". Ginette was asian and we had 2 turkish girls, one girl from denmark in our class. Our teacher was french, but unfortunately I forgot her name.

Top row:  xx; Annie Boucrot; Sebastian; xx; xx; xx; Robert; Marion Kuhmann; Karen; xx; xx; Yves?; Tru(h)n
Second row from top:  David (Boy Scout); Philip; xx; Marianne; John; the rest are unknown
Second row from bottom:  xx; xx; Ginette; the rest are unknown
Bottom row:  All unknown - Unidentified french teacher

8-31-09  Hello everybody! I just came across across this website and the least I can say, I am Dumbstruck. It is fantastic! I attended the classe of 4eme together with TILLISCH, Benedicte (Busk-Jepsen) and Philippe LeBourveau. Susan Carter, is right to recall the Hepatities B outbreake, Philippe passed it on to me and then after me all the schools in the area had to be closed down. The USAF had to fly emergency serums to contain the outbreak which came to our area when the UN troops were returning from the Congo (DRC, Zaire then) with a stopover in Chateauroux. What an extraordinary time that was. I still have the fondest memories from that period. Anyone from the class reading this message please stay in touch. George Kriemadis, Johannesburg-South Africa, George.Kriemadis@Delta-Freight.com Skype: Argonautetm, phone +1-843-5973704, or +33-6-11079522 or +27-82-5568172

LAMOURE, Jean  France  65-66    http://www.stef.ens-cachan.fr/
4-12-06  So Sorry, i'm not onto these photos, i was in "classe terminale de philosophie" in 1965-66 and i rember very welle this school-year : the best of all my school time in "lycée giraudoux".  Did u have other pics ? It will be a great pleasure to talk about this "very old" time... Many thanks !
Jean Lamoure - lamoure@stef.ens-cachan.fr
ENS de Cachan

LUNEAU, Etienne
Association des Anciens élèves du Lycéee Jean Giraudoux
Chateauroux, France
7-25-04  C’est une expérience extraordinaire pour moi de découvrir tous ces témoignages d’un Châteauroux que je n’ai pas connu (je suis né en 1980) et dont mon grand père et mon père m’ont si souvent parlé.

"It is an extraordinary experience for me to discover all these testimonies [memories; recollections] of Chateauroux that I did not know [about] (I was born in 1980) and about which my grandfather and my father so often told me."

Kindergarten & 1st Grade
1963-64

SEUFERT, Jane  - 1976 Little Kid (See brother Jim's entry)
63-64 - International School
64-65 - 1st grade, Touvent

SMITH, Aghee "Bill" II

Chateauroux International School - 2

**STEENBERGEN, Annemieke    9-25-06  Hallo!  i am on the second photo of the international school in Chateauroux.   How nice!  It was the class from Mme. Jardot ou Mme. Grapin ?) and I am the third-one standing on the ground, left from the teacher. The girl with the short hair and the white socks.  I am Dutch and in 1964/1965 we went back to Holland. The school is always in my mind as something very special, all those children from different countries!   I will have to see my photo books from that time to remember the names of my class-mates, but I can remember Norberto (Italy) and Caren (U.S.A.) and I had some very special friends, but their names are not in my mind for this moment. I am sure it will come again.  Just as other people, I remember very well the bread with little chocolate-bar, we gat that just before we went home everyday.  I remember the lessons from Miss Trudy Soetekouw , she taught me my own Dutch language. That was good, I needed them!  After those lessons I had to get back to my classroom, one of the cabins at the edge of the forest. When I came back into the classroom always everyone stood up from his chair, we had to do that always when people came in. But not when children came in the classroom. Because no-one could see if the incoming person was an adult or a child, many times the class was standing up when I came back from my lessons from Miss Soetekouw . I remember I sometimes stayed in the little hall until the end of the lessons, afraid to get in the classroom. I remember also once snakes where under the stairs to enter the cabins. The whole period was very important to me, always when I come back in France I feel “at home”.  It is a precious memory to me.  I hope other old class-mates will respond also, seeing this site about the international school.  I became mother of three children,  I am teacher in classical ballet and drawing. I would like to know what became of the other-ones.  Many greetings from Annemieke Steenbergen.  (Annemiek van der Moezel-Steenbergen.) 

TILLISCH, Benedicte (Busk-Jepsen)   

Benedicte provided this info:  "The International School started in September 1962.   I don't know when it stopped, but I think it was there only for about 3 to 5 years altogether. It was an annex to the Lycée Jean Giraudoux, the French boys' school in Chateauroux and it was meant for the children of employees at the NATO part of the US base at La Martinerie. The first year it had pupils from first grade to ninth grade (French: 11. to 3. grade, as they count the grades backwards) and the next year from first  to tenth grade (11. to 2.)."

"I think there were 150 to 200 pupils at the school. The school was about 4 miles outside Chateauroux and we went there in school buses, picking up the Americans in 410 and Brassioux. I think that the municipality of Chateauroux had rented or bought the building used as school.   It was a small "chateau"  - it was a restaurant  before it was the school. There was a big park in connection with the school and a number of temporary classroom pavilions. There were classes in the big house, too, and this is also where we had our lunch (a three course French lunch every day - not exactly gastronomical, but OK). Classes were taught in  French, as it was a French school, but many of the children had lessons in their own language as well.   During breaks we spoke a lot of English. In my class, there  were 19 pupils (7 French, 4 Americans, 2 French/Americans (one of these Philippe LeBourveau), 1 Turk, 1 Greek*, 1 Norwegian, 2 Germans, and 1 Dane).  There were also Portuguese, Belgian and Dutch pupils at the school."

Attendees:   Haus and Yyohan Lyeldis and Hamet Cogun
*The Greek was Yorgo Kryemadis (This info from Philippe LeBourveau)

1-28-08  Hello, Just came across this site and the school photos of the children looks "somewhat" familiar. I attended a private school (Saint Solange, spelling?) in 1960-1962 in Chateauroux (Chateaureux).  The background with the trees and the walk look very familiar, as does the way the children are posed for the picture.  There were teachers that were not nuns, but most of the teachers were nuns.  I'm wondering if the name has been changed? Xenia

[jpnote:  I have heard or read the word "Solange" somewhere, but not in reference to this particular school.  If someone writes more about it, I will post it here on this page.  Thanks for writing, Xenia.]

WISNIEWSKI, Chris -   
@ Chad:  62-63

I am almost positive I went to kindergarten there the fall and spring of 62/63

1963-64