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Vieilles Maisons: A Little Help From the Friends
| Article
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15996 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1989 |
1,836 Words |
| Author
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William B. Thompson
William B. Thompson is a journalist and free-lance writer
living in Charleston, South Carolina. |
On a soft, warm day in June, Taddy Hall, a nineteen-year-old Yale University student, knelt by a stonewall at the Chateau de Ferriers unconcerned that the knees of his Levi's were developing holes. He was enjoying himself immensely.
For three weeks, Hall and his college roommate, Ted Keim, had been salvaging the past, devoting their skills and energies to restoring some small portion of history's bequest to France.
They, and more than a dozen young Americans like them, have savored the pleasures of Student Experience, a program of the New York City-based Friends of Vieilles Maisons Francaises, Inc. The nonprofit, tax-exempt volunteer organization was founded in 1982 to stimulate American interest in the history, preservation, and restoration of historic French buildings, land, furnishings, and art, thus heightening cross-cultural relationships between the two countries.
Friends is a sister organization of Vieilles Maisons Francaises (VMF), which is a privately funded association in France similar to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States.
Boasting thirteen chapters in the Untied States and one in France, Friends has initiated fifty restoration projects in France and another eight in America. It has raised more than seven hundred thousand dollars since 1983, in the process eliciting matching funds--and sometimes a good deal more--from the French government.
Besides helping the restoration projects monetarily, Friends of VMF
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