Margaret Mitchell helped French town after WWII

In a letter to Barois dated July 14, 1949, and on file at the Vimoutiers historical society, Mitchell thanked him for some perfume he'd sent: "It is something different — something I could not procure here in Atlanta, something no friend of mine possesses."

When Vimoutiers was struggling to raise money to rebuild, Barois thought of his famous American friend. Mitchell was so touched by the account that she sent a check to rebuild the hospital and enlisted the help of the Pilot Club International, a service organization, to help fund the rebuilding of the rest of the town. It's unknown how much Mitchell donated.

"The circle of life sometimes brings wonderful things," said Marie-Christiane Boullard, director of the town historical society and whose sister married Barois. "If my sister hadn't met this young pilot who had trained in the United States and met Margaret Mitchell, we might never have gotten help from the Americans to rebuild."

The town was so grateful they made Mitchell an honorary citizen of Vimoutiers in July 1949, Boullard said from Vimoutiers in a phone interview in French. It was an honor Mitchell apparently held dear, according to a letter at the historical society.

"Nothing that has happened to me before has ever pleased and touched me as much as this honor which you and the Municipal Court of Vimoutiers have paid me," Mitchell wrote in the July 27, 1949, letter to Boullard's father, who ran the hospital.

Mitchell wrote in the letter that she hoped to visit France and see the rebuilt Vimoutiers. But she was hit by a car just a few weeks later in Atlanta and died at age 48.

"She always had a soft spot for soldiers and the armed forces and always tried to do things for them," said Mary Ellen Brooks, curator of rare books and director emeritus of the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia, which has a large collection of Margaret Mitchell and Mitchell family papers, including personal correspondence, research materials, photographs and family legal materials.

Brooks said she hadn't heard anything about Mitchell's connection to Vimoutiers until she was contacted a few months ago by one of Mitchell's descendants who had come across mention of the donation in family papers. Brooks later found a letter that corroborated the story.

The descendant, Bill Troost, whose great-uncle was Mitchell's second husband, attended a ceremony in May 2008 in which a plaque honoring Mitchell was unveiled at the hospital Mitchell helped rebuild.

Last month marked the 65th anniversary of the bombing, and Mitchell remains a beloved figure in Vimoutiers.

"Unless you have lived through something like that," Boullard said of the bombing that killed her brother and destroyed her hometown, "you can't really understand how meaningful this humanitarian aid from the Americans was to us."

On the Net: http://www.vimoutiers.fr/