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The Mayor of the River


From the Nazi Conquest of Paris to the Liberation of a Concentration Camp to a War with Cancer and, finally, Building a Community in Texas:
Denise Salamone has seen it all.

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Denise Effernelli was born in 1927 in Strasbourg, France, to an Italian father and a French mother. Denise's father was always entrepreneurial, and the family moved to Paris when Denise was young. That is where she and Keke lived in May 1940, when Adolf Hitler ordered German forces to invade France.

Swift German victories against Allied troops left Paris in near total fear, and Parisians began a rapid evacuation of the city. The Effernellis were no different, so they instructed their two girls that the family would be leaving the city to escape the coming battle. Denise, however, insisted that she would only leave Paris if the family brought Keke along. So, they did.

It's difficult to imagine the cacophonous perpetual-motion machine that is Paris as solemn and still as Denise describes it when the family left. "The only things in the streets were cats and dogs," she remembers. She was 13 years-old.

Denise and her family fled south, unsure of where to go or what would befall them and their city. As it turned out, however, instead of a drawn out and deadly street-to-street battle, it took the Germans only four days to move on Paris, and the Nazis marched through the Arc de Triomphe with no resistance.
The Effernellis had managed to board a truck on which they traveled south for two weeks. When they learned Paris was "safe," and with no clear idea of where else to go, the family decided to return to their City of Lights, now gone dark.

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Denise remembers when the Third Army, commanded by General George S. Patton, liberated Epfig. The Germans knew the Americans were coming. She and Pierette hid near a window one evening and listened as the German officers and soldiers argued about whether to abandon their post. The Germans fled Epfig that night, and soon thereafter, Patton's battle-hardened troops arrived.

The farmers the girls were staying with would not let them go out in the street as the Americans marched through, but they did let the girls make sandwiches and drinks to set out for the men on two low window sills in the home. Many grateful GIs hungrily accepted the food, but one American soldier simply jumped through the open window and into the house. Denise and Pierette were shocked for a moment, but the lanky American went straight for a piano he had glimpsed through the window and, to the delight of his fellow GIs (and the girls), pounded out "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" on the keys. Denise laughs and exclaims, "It was the happiest day of my life!"

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