By Melville Shavelson, W6VLH
December 1, 1998
The late Fredy Giraudy, F3EG, had connections to make things happen. For years, Fredy made ham radio and hotel accommodations for his US friends coming to France. Now that he's gone, will the connection remain unbroken?
The late Fredy Giraudy, F3EG (right), and his wife, Melike. "Too often we regard DX as no more than a chance to say hello, 73, and lie about the S-meter readings," says author Mel Shavelson, W6VLH. "It isn't often we get to know our overseas contacts well enough to be infinitely saddened by their passing." |
Fredy (left) and Ernest Lehman, K6DXK, on the Riviera at St. Jean Cap Ferrat, France. |
Fredy Giraudy, F3EG, could never be a silent key. He's up there somewhere, trying to break through the QRM and find out when I am going to annoy him again by coming back to the French Riviera so he can put up my antenna for me. Our good friend, screenwriter Ernest "Ernie" Lehman, K6DXK, still maintains a cache of radio equipment in the quaint little French town of St Jean Cap Ferrat, a few kilometers from Fredy's home in the center of downtown Nice. Every summer in the not-so-distant past, the equipment was hauled out of its hiding place by Fredy-- a former member of the French Underground who had done the same with his own equipment during the grim days of World War II--and set up for his arriving American friends who were too Hollywood to attempt it for themselves.
K6DXK established the French-Atlantic Network on 14.245 MHz. It consisted of those members of the Beverly Hills Bel Air Radio Club with enough frequent-flyer miles to visit their radio friends in the South of France on a more-or-less yearly basis. It was Ernie, homesick for his friendly voice, who phoned Fredy recently and instead awoke Fredy's XYL, Melike, who informed him, "Il est mort."
Ernie's French was good enough to get the message. It brought back years of memories. Fredy manufactured brand-new antique furniture to sell to the tourists, but he did not let this lucrative business interfere with his true mission in life, which was furthering Franco-American amity by crawling on roofs, erecting antennas, clinging to chimneys, hooking up transmitters, and making sure his American friends knew which switches to turn without electrocuting themselves--or Fredy.
No one knows why he did this. Perhaps he was repaying a debt to the American forces who helped liberate his part of France in a bloody invasion. The American Military Cemetery is nearby. Fredy certainly received no money for his help and often was pressed into transatlantic service as a travel agency. This was much more difficult than it sounds, because his American friends would not call him on the telephone. Not directly. Instead, they usually awoke him at 7 AM--his time--with a "one-ringer," dialed from California, after which they immediately hung up before he could answer and put a charge on their phone bill.
When his phone rang just once, Fredy's wartime instincts responded immediately and he automatically rolled out of bed, over his sleeping XYL, turned on his radio equipment and tuned in 14.245 MHz and battled all kinds of QRM and QRN to get the vital information from his friends across the Atlantic that it was raining in Beverly Hills. And, oh yes, since he happened to speak French, would he make their hotel reservations? Communication was further complicated by Fredy's next-door neighbor, a lady who watched television day and night. When Fredy transmitted, it caused the lady's TV set to do the can-can. Since she was large, vociferous, and given to pounding on the wall, it was necessary to call Fredy only when his neighbor lady was asleep. Fortunately, she slept soundly from 10:30 PM until 8:30 AM, Fredy's time. Otherwise all of Southern France might have been isolated from contact with the rest of the world for hours.
A few years ago, the city authorities in Nice razed three blocks of buildings in the center of the city in order to build a new city hall. However, when they finished tearing down the buildings, the cleared area looked too good to waste it on housing politicians. So, wisely, the city fathers decided not to build anything, but to fill the area with huge rows of beautiful, flowing fountains.
They made such a lovely, sparkling display in the heart of the city that they decided to have a formal dedication at which the Mayor of Nice was to speak. When the Mayor climbed the platform to deliver his oration, he happened to look up, and there, on the top of one of the nearby apartment buildings, he spotted Fredy's sagging, bedraggled beam antenna.
Lehman, at home in his shack near Beverly Hills. |
Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. To Freddie, his huge antenna was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen this side of a Renoir nude. It was some 40 or 50 lovely feet of battered aluminum with other pieces of ancient metal 35 feet long crisscrossing it. All this was atop a 20-foot metal tower supported by guy wires, constituting a beam antenna which could be rotated at will to any point of the compass by a groaning electric motor. Provided there was no wind. The tower also supported nine or ten other antennas made of wire, antennas whose purpose Fredy had long since forgotten. They, too, were beautiful, just not to Monsieur le Mayor.
The police were ordered to command that this monstrosity, this blot on the lovely skyline of the Côte d'Azur, be immediately removed and destroyed--killed, if it were alive. When the gendarmes knocked on Fredy's door and ordered the antenna murdered, he asked them if the mayor happened to know who he was? The gendarmes replied that it didn't make a damn bit of difference who Fredy was, just get that terrible object off the roof tout de suite!
Fredy went back into his apartment and secured two bottles of his finest Scotch whiskey. Then he paid a visit to the mayor in the old City Hall. Fredy still limped from his war wounds. He wore in his lapel the little ribbons representing the French Republic's highest military awards, including the Legion d'Honeur, equivalent to America's Medal of Honor. And Fredy's father had given the mayor his first job.
I do not know if Fredy and the mayor finished both bottles of whiskey at one sitting, but I do know that an order went out to the gendarmerie that Fredy's antenna farm on top of his apartment building was not to be touched by anyone--for any reason--for the duration of Fredy's life, which the mayor hoped would be a long and pleasant one.
The antennas were indeed beautiful. And so Fredy could talk to his friends on the French-Atlantic Network whenever he wanted to. Except between 10:30 PM and 8:00 AM, Fredy Time, of course.
Maybe it was the limp, but Fredy was seriously injured a few years later when he failed to elude a speeding motor car in the square near the sparkling fountains. Although he recovered, he could no longer climb his tower or rearrange his antennas, and his interest in Amateur Radio diminished--perhaps in proportion to the large number of American hams who had found his operating frequency and bombarded him with requests to use his knowledge of French to get them inexpensive hotel accommodations. Or, possibly, freebies.
The beam antenna came down. So, unfortunately, did Fredy, in the month of July, 1998, shortly after Bastille Day. "Il est mort," Melike had said.
I am waiting now for a one-ringer from The Beyond. If anyone can do it, Fredy, with his connections, will make it happen. Perhaps it will take another bottle of scotch. In the meantime, I will continue to monitor 14.245 MHz.
Vive Fredy! Vive la France!
The author, in an SSTV-rendered mug shot. Photos courtesy of Mel Shavelson, W6VLH. |
Mel Shavelson, W6VLH, says he's a North Hollywood writer by choice, producer through necessity, and director in self defense. He has received two Academy Award nominations for original screenplays and has served three terms as president of the Writers Guild of America. Among his screenplays are "Houseboat," "Ike: The War Years," "The Five Pennies," and "Yours, Mine, and Ours." He may be contacted via e-mail at mel@wgn.net
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