Vasseur, Mary Burmeister (1921-2020) | Oberlin College Archives

Mary Burmeister was born on April 29, 1921, to Frederick W. and Ruth Heileman Burmeister. She was raised in Springfield, Ohio, and graduated from Springfield High School in 1939.

Mary attended Oberlin College from 1939-1943. There, she studied romance languages and lived in French House (La Maison Française), a dorm in which only French was spoken in common spaces. Mary graduated from Oberlin College in 1943 with a bachelor’s degree. She continued her studies at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, from which she earned a degree in library science in 1944. After library school, Mary returned to Oberlin, where she rented a room from a professor of American History and worked in the cataloging department of the library.

During World War II, a French House classmate at Oberlin College who had enlisted for military service arranged for other French House students, including Mary Burmeister, to correspond as pen pals with members of a group of Free French servicemen in training at the US Naval Base in Jacksonville, Florida. Mary exchanged letters with a French serviceman named Raymond Duffour beginning in early 1943. Raymond’s letters frequently incorporated mention of his close friend, Jacques Vasseur, often using the nickname “Jacquot” (Jimmy, in English). When Raymond sustained a hand injury in July of 1944, Jacques began to type letters to Mary on Raymond’s behalf. Raymond and Mary’s correspondence stopped in August of 1944.

In January of 1945, Jacques and Mary began to exchange letters with one another directly. Mary returned to Springfield to work at the Warder library in 1946. She lived with her parents.

Mary traveled to France to meet Jacques and his mother in 1948. She returned from the trip engaged, and the Mary and Jacques were married in France on June 27, 1950. Stories of their unconventional romance and years of letter writing sparked newspaper coverage in Ohio and Paris. Their son, Dominique, was born in 1951.

After her husband’s death in 1953, Mary returned to Springfield to raise their son. She worked as a librarian in Springfield from 1954 until her retirement in 1979. Many of those years were spent working for the school library system. Mary Burmeister Vasseur lived with her son, Dominique, in Columbus until her death on November 2, 2020.