Lourdes is an extraordinary place of beauty, nestled in the Pyrenees mountains. Six million people visit Lourdes every year, including 100,000 volunteers and 80,000 ill and disabled pilgrims seeking cures for their afflictions or the strength to endure them. Of course, Dale has returned to Lourdes many times since joning the Order of Malta.
My sister, Jean, has done a great deal of genealogy work about our family. She had determined our ancestors on my father’s side immigrated in 1851 to New Orleans from Chein-Dessus, a small village of 200 people. He was Jacque Fos and he met our great great grandmother on the ship, the Utica,
and later married her. I hired a car, driver and guide to take us to Chein-Dessus one afternoon, and we had a great adventure, meeting a man who owned the ancestral home of the Fos family. We gained access to the beautiful village church and found the Fos name there and in the nearby cemetery.
The cities and villages of Provence were just beautiful in so many ways. Full of history and art and rich human life.
George Box was again my star for the Pilgrim Players production. As Jacques LeRock, CNN International religious reporter, I interviewed a priest from Atlanta who was leading a bunch of religious fanatics through Provence, terrorizing the population. He called himself King Edward and imagined he was royalty reincarnated. Our commercial girl was his wife Norma, who played Sister Clair Rene Beaujolais, who was hawking Holy Spirit Timeshares to benefit the Edward J. Dillon Retirement Fund. I came up with some great nicknames and backstories for our six new initiates into our secret society, the SAPS (Secret Agent Pilgrims Society).
