Today’s column is the last in a series on Martin Schmidt and Jacqueline Virginie Guillaume, World War II teenage refugees from Europe who married in 1951 and later emigrated to this area as Marty and Jackie Smith.
Martin Schmidt and Jacqueline Guillaume met in 1949 at a government office in Bar-le-Duc, France, as Europe attempted to rebuild a sense of normalcy after World War II.
The young couple, both in their early 20s, met again at a social dance, where they first embraced.
“She was the most beautiful woman I ever saw in my life,” he recalled in a Romanian accent.
“He was a good guy,” she recalled in French.
An instant attraction bonded Martin and Jacqueline despite their different homelands and languages — two war refugees finding a slice of heaven in the wake of hell. That first dance led to another, then another. One date led to another, then another. They rode his motorcycle through the French countryside, sharing their lives and their new love. Marriage was as inevitable as war.
“No big proposal or nothing,” she recalled. “He just asked me, and I said yes, of course.”
On June 14, 1951, they married in Bar-le-Duc. It was 11 years to the day after Paris fell to Nazi Germany. In the fall of 1951, they left France on a three-week adventure by passenger ship to begin their new life together in a strange country — Canada.
“We could not get into America because of the quota system,” Jacqueline said.
They arrived in Windsor, Ontario, just across the river from Detroit, with little money but a vault of hope. Martin worked at a junkyard making $25 a week. Jacqueline worked at a nuts and candy shop, learning how to speak English. They struggled to make ends meet. It was nothing compared to their lives apart from each other during wartime.
In 1953, Jacqueline gave birth to their first child, a daughter. Three years later, another daughter. In the summer of 1956, the young family moved to another strange new land, Indiana, to be near Martin’s aunt, Maria Urschel, from Romania. She was married to Michael Urschel, a U.S. Steel Gary Works employee who sponsored the young couple to become American citizens. They settled in the Tolleston section of Gary, just as my family did.
“We didn’t know anything about Gary, Indiana,” Jacqueline said.
“We just knew we were finally in America,” Martin said.
Like countless immigrants before them, they changed their names — to Marty and Jackie Smith — to better assimilate into postwar American society. Marty continued to work as a mechanic using skills he learned during the war, including at BP Amoco in Whiting and as a school bus mechanic in Merrillville and Portage. He retired in 1992.
Jackie was a stay-at-home mom, finding creative ways to contribute to her family as a baker, a seamstress and the resilient thread that kept her family stitched together. The couple now has six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, all who know about their extraordinary struggles and triumphs during World War II.
They know that Marty served as a translator for the U.S. Army, helping with prisoner-of-war interviews while driving military trucks hauling gasoline from Paris to Normandy. And that Jackie served with the French underground resistance, smuggling dynamite past Nazi troops in her bicycle handlebars.
They know that Marty almost enlisted in the French Foreign Legion, until his friend didn’t pass the physical so he backed out. And that Jackie, her mother, and brothers all cried when their village raised the French flag after Nazi occupation ended.
“Where did all the years go?” asked Marty, 94, who has vision troubles and mobility problems.
“It all seems like yesterday,” said Jackie, 95, with a loving glance to her husband of 70 years.
The couple lived in Gary for many years before moving to Merrillville, then to Lakes of the Four Seasons in 1978, where they currently live on their own. (Watch videos in their own words, and view more photos, on my Facebook page, www.facebook.com/JerDavich/. Read my first two columns at bancodeprofissionais.com/suburbs/chi-jerry-davich-staff.html.)
“They are the perfect example of adapting to life’s challenges,” said their youngest daughter, Jackie Smith Webster, of Valparaiso. “They just accepted whatever was the situation and kept moving forward. That was how their generation was raised.”
Marty and Jackie have never forgotten their European roots and heritage. They have returned there multiple times, including an eight-country family adventure to both of their homelands and to Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Italy and England.
“We met a lot of relatives on that trip,” their daughter said.
Her parents still keep in touch with remaining relatives, including Jackie’s younger brother who lives in Bar-le-Duc, where they began their life together.
“My sister and I are here by sheer chance and fate,” their daughter said. “The same now goes with all of our descendants.”
Marty and Jackie are well aware of the ongoing Russian invasion into Ukraine, causing more than 1.5 million refugees to escape into neighboring countries over the past two weeks. The mass exodus is being called the fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.
“It’s just horrible,” Jackie said.
“It’s another madman in power,” Marty added.
If you look into their weary eyes, you can still see young “Martzy” and Jacqueline, two teenage refugees who somehow survived a war that ripped them apart and brought them together. They share a message of hope and resilience to all the new refugees.
“Hope and faith can get them through this,” Jackie said.
“If there was not a war, we would have never met,” Marty added.
“That’s how life goes on,” Jackie said.
