Editor’s note: I had dug out the following account of my first visit to Cannes, the jewel-like city on the Cote d’Azure and my first encounter with the vivacious and extraordinary Maitre Avery Glize-Kane. She is one of those women who captivates at first meeting, and stays with you in memory the rest of your life. In looking around for a period picture of her a quarter century ago, I came across the really sad news that she passed across to the Big Fleet Landing on January 8th of this year after a long struggle with cancer. I wish she had told me when we had lunch in Bethesda that it would be our last meeting.
She was something really special in this world. Avery was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and spent her professional life as a lawyer, mostly practicing in Cannes, France. Above all, though, she served her native country as the U.S. Counsel in Nice, just up the road, and having founded the Riviera Council of the U.S. Navy League. In that capacity she welcomed naval ships to la Côte d’Azur with full fanfare. She entertained the Fleet and friends from all over the world in her 19th century villa, and was loved by many. She will be dearly missed by all her friends and family. Services were held on Tuesday, January 19, 2016 at 11am at Holy Trinity Church, Cannes France. I wish I had been there to honor her.

I am meeting Lutt-man, the authentic one, for a couple drinks tonight. I will toast her memory then.

A Wedding At Avery’s

21 DEC 1989:

A morning to prepare for the Big Brief to RADM Sweetpea. I am working on graphics and messages aboard ship until 1500. Then I felt stale and changed into running gear to get off FID and take a jog on the pier, looking at the commercial shipping arriving at Marseille and the ferries that bring thousands of people from the old colonies on the other side of the Med.

Then a thoroughly non-Navy shower, luxuriating in the shore-connected water, and then Go to France again. What a country! The Christmas shoppers, the beautiful women, the sidewalk cafes filled with boulevardiers and people watching people.

Josh Randall and I roam to the outskirts of the city, finding little frommageries and boulangeries to buy cheese and a fresh-baked baguette.

What did de Gaulle say? “How can you govern a nation with 246 varieties of Cheese?” I have no idea.

We enjoy pressed saucisse sandwiches and have an early night back to the docks and in the rack by 2300.

As we sleep, a sailor from VS-28 is murdered in town by druggies about 0300. It appears to be a sort of French drive-by killing and not associated with international terrorism. The helo squadron XO is the Senior Shore Patrol Officer, and he watches him die in the ambulance. Two sailors down on this cruise so far. Paperwork to follow….

22 Dec:

It has arrived: the Big Brief morning. We drink coffee in Mission Planning and make the final tweaks on the brief preparations. I’m in the head reading Navy Times when the summons comes from TFCC. We are on stage at 1050. Sweetpea, being the Liberty-conscious sailor that he is, pronounces his favor and congratulations in a record 42.5 minutes. I think he wants to get ashore and start the party as much as we do.

Literally floating on air now that the big set-piece of how we would fight the opening weeks of war in the Med, we drift across the passageway to the Admin Office, where CAG announces the big procession to the Wedding in Cannes.

The response is lukewarm at best. I am appalled. I shout for support, rallying my staff-mates like John Belushi did in the rousing conclusion to Animal House. “Did we give up when the Germans Bombed Pearl Harbor! This is an issue of free travel, free food, and the opportunity for total immersion!”

I manage to convince Toad and Lutt-man that this could be our chance to act as Ambassadors of Good Will to an entire city of helpless French.

New Chop and Thorn T are also bludgeoned into the trip. We pack on the fly, clothes hurtling everywhere through the compartment. Later, in the rental cars, Toad conducts a driving clinic.

Staying on the bumper of the world’s greatest attack pilot who also is lost in France is not the easiest thing to do. Thankfully, we are riding with the Greatest Fighter Pilot of this time, the famous Mr. Toad. CAG pulls one six-G maneuver to get to another lane 
that is truly a thing of wonder.

We wind up on the Superhighway to the Cote d’Azure after many modest travails, and roll across the lovely hills of the South of France. After about three hours we pull off on the Cannes exit and plunge down a long straight road and into the lovely village of Cannes.

We enjoyed the view from the elevated highway that crosses the train station and parallels the commercial district. Later, after a Riviera version of gridlock, we find ourselves ramming the cars into the curb before a quaint walled fin de seicle villa that apparently has been divided into flats. CAG gets us buzzed through the gate and we walk across a crushed rock driveway and up to the cool dark central staircase that leads up three floors.

The place is wonderfully French; obviously vastly expensive but slightly threadbare, just in case the tax-collector comes around. On the third floor landing we meet the vivacious Avery Glize-Kane, la belle Maitre dan les Ville Cannes, agent Consulaire des Etats-Unis à Nice and founder and President of the Riviera Chapter of the US Navy League.

She is an erstwhile resident of the Charm City of Baltimore, but has been a resident of Cannes, where her native English is now accented, and so immersed in the French language that she is a practitioner of law before the French Bar. Dark haired and petite, Avery is a gamen of indeterminate age; when she laughs, which is often, the wrinkles around her eyes are pronounced.

The laughter begins almost immediately. When you join one of Avery’s parties there is no question that she is in complete command. She is well known to every Battle Group Commander in the Med, and has often known them since they were junior officers. She is more than a legend. She is the Cote d’Azure to a generation of navy pilots.

Within minutes of our arrival we found ourselves shown through the garret apartment which would be our home off and on throughout our month in France, as we frolic in a manner calculated to not alarm the fidgeting Soviets underway.

We reach the top floor via a narrow staircase; the garret is everything one could possibly ask for in terms of accommodations. It is a complete floor of the villa, an apartment with a large central room where you can stand upright under the peak of the roof, with a variety of smaller rooms near the eaves where you could not. In the small toilette there is a skylight through which my head protruded while urinating.

There was a kitchenette and a magnificent view of the town from a window with working shutters. There is beer in the refrigerator and it is a good thing. We had pressing social obligations; within the hour we were attired in Service Dress Blues and proceeding in a line like Avery’s ducklings down the narrow streets through the town to the Church.

We are among the first of the guests to arrive at the old grey protestant church and we are seated on the Groom’s side, fashionably down front. Our role is to provide moral support for him, as he will tie the knot in his LCDR uniform. Avery thinks it will be nice or the Fleet to make a show and thus we are de facto members of the groom’s party, a Black Shoe ship-driver we have not previously met, but has now become one of New Best Friends.

We are rapt spectators at the wedding, with the service conducted in French, no less. It is a thing of wonder, and aside from feeling a little thirsty, we are touched by the ceremony and the romance.

After the service (of which I understand perhaps 30%), we retire to Avery’s flat to prepare for the Reception, which is to be held in Grasse, France’s largest City. Many think that must be Paris, but I demur. Grasse must be much larger, since while lost on the road, we must have passed about twenty exit signs for the place.

Grasse is famous largely for its parfumeries and number of 
highway exits. We wind up the long hills in the rental cars and pull into the parking lot of a pleasantly modern hotel where the festivities will shortly commence. We nautical props are seated at random throughout the throng of real wedding guests. There is bottomless wine and delicious food. Soon we are dancing and singing, and it goes on until dawn. I propose a toast and sing my version of the Wedding Song from the “Three Penny Opera.” The groom seems dazed by the whole thing but we are truly
Ambassador’s of Good Will.

The French appear to be loving our act. Avery makes us promise to come back and visit, and we volunteer to act as her culinary staff for the Christmas celebrations. What had looked like a boring social obligation had turned into one of the most riotous frolics of our lives.

Later, in the darkness of the garret, we find a recumbent ENS Ruth in my designated bed. “Are there any Ensigns in the LCDR’s room?” shouted Lutt-man. Chop feigned unconsciousness and I am reduced to racking in the double bed by the window with Lutt-man.

It is crisp with the window open and the stars are hard, clear lights in the velvet sky. I am gratified that he kept his hands to himself, since there had been romance in the air all day.

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com