Special Note: This month’s article is by guest author, Allen Voisine
Georges Voisine and Annie Long were married on May 27, 1902. By October 14, 1925, they had 12 sons and 3 daughters.
- They lost 6 children by the end of October 1937 – Theodule, Adelard, Rene, George, Hermine, and an Anonymous Son
- Two sons died two days apart in January 1913 – Adelard and Rene
- One was born in May and died in August 1913 – George
By the end of WWII in 1945, four sons served – Phileas, Edgar, Edouard, and Edwin:
- 1 had served at Fort Knox, Kentucky – Phileas
- 1 died in battle in Epinal, Vosges, France, on February 5, 1945 – Edwin
- 1 died in a hospital in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, on March 22, 1945 – Edouard
- 1 during the time of his younger brother’s death in Europe, was wounded, and he would eventually receive 2 Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star for gallantry in Action – Edgar
My own grandfather was lying down on a couch in a body cast from the waist down and paralyzed on the right side when he narrowly escaped a fire after my Dad carried him out and brought him across the street to a neighbor’s home. This happened on February 19, 1945, when his store/residence burned to the ground as a result of an explosion from the kerosene tank in the cellar after the delivery of fuel when fumes were ignited by static electricity from an ungrounded delivery truck on February 19, 1945. He would eventually die on May 14, 1984 – Lucien
Despite everything, most of the remaining children lived to their 70s, 80s, and 90s. My great-grandfather was 73 when he died, and my great-grandmother was 79 when she died.
