Bryan J. Clapper

1502 2nd Ave SW, Austin, MN 55912 • bryan@bjclapper.com

From oppression to opulence

Originally published in the Austin Daily Herald, Feb. 6, 2007

Word after word, legal pad after legal pad, Nelly Croes is slowly writing the story of her life.

She writes longhand, sitting down to transcribe the experiences of her life only when she feels like it. She started the project after years of prodding from her friends, and after one of them offered to type the book for her.

It’s a life story with twists and turns worthy of any Hollywood script — a life that took her from war-torn France, where she was surrounded by death and oppression, to living in an apartment in the Hormel mansion, where she was surrounded by luxury and movie stars.

Croes fled Juvincourt, France with her family when Hitler’s German army pushed into France from neighboring Belgium. Her family had owned a restaurant there, and had one hour to leave their town in advance of the coming military.

“We had all the people from Belgium going through our town leaving on foot, some of them with baby carriages,” Croes said. “We never thought we would be doing the same thing.”

They fled to a town near Paris, where her uncle lived. Her mother refused to go any further, saying the family would stay there and wait and see what would happen. They would later return to Juvincourt to find that their home had been leveled by bombs, and ended up in Guignicourt, near Reims, where German and American forces would sign a peace treaty in 1945.

But not until after five years of German occupation of Guignicourt.

“It was not easy during the war, being under bombs all the time,” Croes said. “I had a childhood sweetheart ... who was in the French underground. The Germans caught him, shot him; and one of my uncles used to be a career officer. When he was in the underground, the Germans caught him, and we found out later once when we went to visit my aunt ... she took us to the sport where he was killed.”

Croes’ voice drops when recalling the horrors of the war. When visiting the spot where her uncle was killed, she said a woman whose home overlooked it came out to them and described in detail what had happened.

Croes’ uncle and three of his compatriots were captured and held in the house all night. In the morning, the German soldiers led them outside, bloody and bruised from a night of torture, and forced them to dig a grave for them to fall into after being executed.

His father watched the entire thing from the neighbor’s window, the woman told the family.

“I remember when we were in town, every time you heard the Germans walking in the street with their heavy steps and so on, you always wondered if they were going to stop by your house,” she said. “If they had found out that my childhood boyfriend was in the underground — and we hid him many times with his friends — we would have been killed.”

After nearly five years of occupation by the Germans, the residents of Guignicourt were liberated by the Americans. Naturally, the young residents of the town planned to hold a dance in a local barn to celebrate.

“One afternoon my parents were walking down the street and a jeep stopped with some Americans, and one American came out and spoke French to them and said, ‘Is there a dance in town?’” Croes said. “My mother said, ‘Yeah, it’s down that way, and Nelly is there,’ and that was my future husband.”

The American soldier, Victor Croes, who was French by birth but had been drafted into the American military, found Nelly standing with some friends outside the dance and introduced himself.

“They stayed there about three weeks, and the day after he met me, he asked me to marry him,” Croes said. “He was an old bachelor, he was 20 years older than me.”

She was 18 or 19 at the time, and had no interest in getting married so young, but Victor kept writing. It took her three years to finally give him an answer.

In the meantime, Croes, who had learned to speak English at her parents’ restaurant in Juvincourt while hosting British soldiers, got a job as a translator for the American military, and was given a jeep and chauffeur.

The town’s proximity to Reims made it an important camp for the American military, even hosting Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe.

“When he first came, I saw all the officers standing at attention, so I stood up, too. I didn’t know what was going on,” Croes said. “There came Gen. Eisenhower, and he looked at me and he said, ‘What have we got here?’ He said, ‘Please sit down,’ he put his hand on my shoulder. I was so startled I didn’t say a word.”

Victor had been the chef for the George A. Hormel family for a number of years before the war, and longed to bring Nelly back to Austin with him.

“He was a nice fellow, and my parents just loved him,” Croes said. “Mrs. Hormel wrote me a letter and vouched for his integrity and said that I would really love it here, so I decided to come here.”

Engaged, Croes fled war-torn France for the lap of luxury in the United States.

Victor sent for her, but fearing she might meet someone else during the long voyage by boat across the Atlantic, paid $750 — a huge sum in the 1940s — to fly her from France to New York City, where he met her. They were married in St. Jean Baptiste, a French cathedral in New York, and then came to Austin. The Hormel family held a reception for them upon their return, and they were all surprised she could speak English.

After fleeing German army occupation, Croes found herself surrounded by descendants of German immigrants.

“I was brought up hating the Germans, and when I first came here, all our friends were of German descent. I wrote to my parents and I said, ‘You know, they’re not so bad after all,’” she said.

“Right after that, a few days after, we went to California to their mansion there for the winter by limousine,” Croes said. “They had to have their limousine in California, so the chauffeur was driving it and we went along with him.”

She only asked for one thing: that they go to Texas to see a true American cowboy.

“There was a cattle drive and we stopped and we asked a cowboy and his horse if he could take pictures with us,” Croes said. “He didn’t know what was going on. You see a limousine and you think it’s somebody famous.”

After several years of traveling back and forth between Austin and California as the private chef for the Hormel family, Nelly and Victor had a son and decided to stay in Austin. Victor transferred to a job at the corporate offices as an executive chef. After her mother came to Austin to live with them, Nelly also joined the Hormel Foods Company, working in the corporate offices for 42 years. Victor died in 1989 after a long illness.

Nelly and Victor had two children together, and hosted the Hormel’s sons, celebrities and even relatives of royalty in the southwest Austin home where she still lives.

One of the sons of the in-laws of the queen of Denmark was studying agriculture in Minnesota, and when his parents visited Austin 40 years ago, a local state senator insisted that they be treated to dinner at the home of the only truly French chef in town.

“One of their sons was engaged to the crown princess at that time. Those people had a chateau in France ... but they came here and they were just like normal people,” Croes said.

During her time at Hormel Foods, her co-workers insisted that she write about her experiences and adventures.

“Most of my friends when I worked at the office said, ‘You’ve got to write a book, Nelly,’” she said.

And so she writes — taking time not to miss any of the unique details that make up her one-of-a-kind life.