Thursday, July 24, 2003

By Monica L. Haynes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

When Robert French saw Jeanette Foster walking down a hotel hallway during the 1953 National Urban League Convention in Philadelphia, he told a co-worker he was going to marry the graceful young woman. The co-worker scoffed.

	Robert and Jeanette French as they appeared in their February 1954 wedding. (Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette) Click photo for larger image. Related material National Urban League Convention: An index to coverage

A year later, the couple attended the National Urban League Convention in Pittsburgh as husband and wife.

Theirs is not just a story of love at first sight, but one of respect, commitment and warmth.

"We got married and stayed together," said Robert French, who spent 30 years as a Braddock Hills councilman. "You have to have some type of warmth in you to care about somebody else. It just came automatically, and I couldn't have done better."

The return of the National Urban League Convention to Pittsburgh this week for the first time since 1954 has the couple and their friends reminiscing about their whirlwind courtship.

French, now 84, was a 34-year-old widower, World War II veteran and salesman for Seagrams Distillers when he attended that fateful convention 50 years ago. His company was sponsoring one of the hospitality suites.

His future wife, 29 at the time, was a community organization secretary for the Urban League in Muskegon, Mich., a position she had also held in Fort Wayne, Ind. It was her first Urban League convention.

	Robert and Jeanette French met during the 1953 National Urban League convention in Philadelphia. They'll celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in February. (Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette) Click photo for larger image.

"When I left the office in Muskegon, I just casually said to the secretary, 'Maybe I'll just go and get me a husband," Jeanette French, 79, remembered.

She was just kidding. "Neither one of us knew the other existed in this world," she said. "I had never been to Philadelphia, knew very little about Seagrams Distillers and certainly didn't know him."

She attributes their meeting in the hotel elevator to fate.

"When I first saw him I thought he was [vibraphonist] Lionel Hampton and I had met Lionel Hampton," Jeanette French recalled. But on second glance, she realized he was not the famous musician.

They spent a lot of time together at the convention, talking.

"By the end of the conference, he was saying he wanted to get married. I was saying we can't get married this soon."

But her future husband, whose first wife had been dead only a month, was convinced that Jeanette was the one for him. "God knew I needed somebody, and this was the person I needed," he said.

The next month, he went to her hometown of Dowagiac, Mich., to meet her family. A month later, in November, she returned to Pittsburgh to meet his and receive her engagement ring.

While Robert French's mother liked Jeanette, she was apprehensive about him marrying so soon after the death of his first wife, Jeanette French said. But he was determined.

The couple got together again in December when French and his mother stopped in Michigan on their way home from a family outing. The next time they laid eyes on each other was the following February, when Robert French traveled to Michigan to get married. By their wedding day, Feb. 20, 1954, they'd only seen each other four times. Of course, there were lots of phone calls and letters in between.

The couple settled in Braddock Hills, not far from Robert French's hometown of Rankin. He became interested in politics and was encouraged to run for council to replace Walter Hales, the borough's first black council member.

"He was always interested in the community up here," said his wife.

She worked as a juvenile court probation officer and then as a social worker for the Pittsburgh Public Schools, retiring in 1986. Her husband retired from Seagrams in the early '80s.

The couple have one daughter, Stacye Blue, who lives with her husband, Michael, and children, Rashad, 16; Kamron, 12 and Jazmynne, 5, in Virginia Beach.

Though his poor health will probably prevent the Frenches from attending this year's convention, they have particularly warm feelings toward the Urban League and its conventions.

"I just thank God for his goodness in letting this happen," Robert French said of his marriage.

Monica Haynes can be reached at mhaynes@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1660.