For Valentine's Day:
A French Love Story

When my youngest son was barely a teen, we invited a French boy to come to America and be our guest for a summer month. The next summer we repeated with a second French boy. The following summer, our son spent a month with a family in France. We enjoyed the French boys and our son loved his summer in France - although most of it was spent at their vacation home in Spain!

One of the interesting stories he later told was that the French boys revealed they had always heard American girls were hot and horny. This surprised him, because he had always heard it was the French girls who were lovely and love-starved.

There are a lot of silly misconceptions between Americans and the French. Don't most Americans think the French are a bunch of pantywaists? Aren't most Frenchmen in complete bewilderment that America is full of wholly unsophisticated rednecks? Not really. Here is one story about our true relationship.

On Christmas Eve, 1732, a boy named Edward Peregois was born somewhere in France. For reasons no longer known, he emigrated to America.

A Frenchman, in an America run by Englishmen, Edward found his surname misspelled repeatedly. Eventually the family settled on the spelling Pedigo - which, pronounced by an Englishman, sounds about like Peregois, pronounced by a Frenchman.

Edward fell in love with his new land and when there arose a movement among colonists to declare America's independence from England, Edward joined in. In fact, he became a member of America's military, willing to fight for that Independence. With a Virginia Regiment, he joined General Washington's army at Valley Forge, PA where they did, indeed, fight for America's independence.

After the war, a grateful America gave Edward Pedigo a land warrant and he became a successful Virginia farmer, and father of seven. When his wife died, he remarried and fathered another seven children! Lots of hands for that Virginia farm.

But, as the years and generations progressed, much of the family migrated west to Kentucky and beyond. Eventually, Estella Greene Pedigo, daughter of the fifth generation, gave birth to three sons in Texas. These three Texas boys all came of age in time to be called to military duty during the global conflict that would become known as the World War. (And eventually, "The First World War")

The oldest son, Prentice Bradley was first to go to France. There, in November, 1918, just before the Armistice ended it all, in a wooded place known to historians as the Argonne Forest, Prentice Bradley died fighting for the freedom of his great, great, great, great grandfather's native land.

Such is the true relationship of the Americans and the French. As Charles DeGaulle once pointed out, our nations have always been the closest of friends. We share the rare and blessed fact that French and American armies have never faced each other in battle.

And I find it poignant that my great, great, great, great, great grandfather, Edward Pedigo left France to come fight for America. And that my uncle, Prentice Bradley, left America to go fight for France.

That was a true French love story. A Frenchman and an American. Love of freedom. Love of your fellow man.