In it, Saint-Ex describes his crash in the Sahara Desert, his experience as a "Prisoner of the Sand," and his deliverance along with Prévot by a "Bedouin of Libya." That experience supplied the backdrop for The Little Prince. Recently, I checked out Saint-Ex's book Wind, Sand and Stars (Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939) at my neighborhood library. Delauze's "Virtual Diving" operation has already used a robot submarine to investigate a pre-Christian wreck off Marseilles. No sooner had Bianco reported his find when Henri-Germain Delauze, president of the professional diving society COMEX, announced that he would undertake a search for Saint-Ex's plane. The bracelet was inscribed with the names of Saint-Exupéry, his Argentine wife Consuelo, and Reynal & Hitchcock, the New York publishers of The Little Prince. His net brought up a silver chain bracelet. On September 26th he was trawling near a rocky inlet about 115 miles west of Marseilles. That day Jean-Claude Bianco was doing what he does most days of the week. The other shows him in the cockpit of a Lockheed P-38 Lightning preparing to depart from Corsica on his final flight, his flight to eternity, July 31, 1944.īut he was heard from again, just the day before, September 26th, only hours before I read about him in "La Dépéche." The great aviator-romantic, born with the new century, was heard from at last after 54 years of silence. One shows him standing nonchalant with his mechanic Prévot, hands in pockets, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, looking coyly into the camera. The article in "La Dépéche" describes Saint-Ex as the consummate dreamer and also a "man of action." Two photos accompany the article. He adorns the 50 franc bank note, and activities are carried out in his honor every month of the year all over the country. And it would be difficult to overestimate Saint-Ex's stature at home. The classic children's book has been translated into 103 languages world wide, with Albanian, Bosnian, Tibetan and Braille waiting in the wings. Since then Blagnac has given birth to the supersonic Concorde, the Ariane rocket, and Airbus industries.Īnd it gave the world "la poèt," Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Saint-Ex, author of The Little Prince. In the first three decades of the century, despite the heroics of the Americans Wilbur and Orville Wright and Charles Lindbergh, France led the way in aviation. Under the title "100 ans D'Avions" the magazine cover featured pictures of early pilots, such as Clément Ader and Jean Mermoz, and their air fields - Toulouse, Montaudran, Blagnac. Within the hour I saw the word Blagnac for the only the second time, this time on the cover of the Sunday magazine to "La Dépéche du Midi," the leading newspaper in the region, the Septemedition. Scott gave him his business card, and Jean-Louis wrote his address on the back of a scrap of paper he retrieved from his sister's house. We promised him we would be in touch to arrange the exchange of genealogies. When Scott mentoned the name of our ancestor who left in the 17th century, Jean-Louis exclaimed, stressing the last syllable, "Cana da." Ah, a connection! We made out that he had been looking into his family history, too. The woman ushered us around the corner and there he was, Jean-Louis, a silver-haired man, about 60, with a friendliness endemic to Occitania, the country of the language of "Oc" in southern France. There was a fellow in town from Toulouse with the same last name visiting his sister. Did she know anyone by that name? A flurry of words and gestures sufficed to alert us that we were in luck. Scott explained that we were Americans visiting the village in search of our ancestors. We understood, in our limited grasp of French, that the parish priest had died and there would be no Mass that day. When we arrived at the church we encountered an short elderly woman about to unlock the door. Parisot is about 90 minutes northwest of Toulouse, "la ville rose," the pink city, the capital of the Midi-Pyrénées region of France. One day in late September my cousin Scott and I went to attend Mass at the 14th Century Gothic church in Parisot en Rouergue, the little French village of our ancestors. And so you will love to watch all the stars in the heavens. My star will be just one of the stars, for you. Where I live everything is so small that I cannot show you where my star is to be found. "And at night you will look up at the stars. The Doric Column - Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, early aviation, technology and the spirit, Bill Gates
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