Life Story: Henri de Marne 'Reinvented Himself Many Times'

Henri de Marne in the 1970s Credit: Susan Donnis

This “Life Stories” profile is part of a collection of articles remembering Vermonters who died in 2024.

In a long life well lived, Henri de Marne was, at various times, a teenage volunteer for the French Red Cross in World War II; a postwar émigré to the U.S., where he became a French teacher; the owner of a home remodeling business; a ski instructor; and the author of a nationally syndicated newspaper column on home improvement.

Henri left France — but France never left him. A Gallic tang suffused his speaking voice. He was a gourmand, of sorts; when a dish pleased him, he would compare its delectability to “the baby Jesus sliding down my throat in velvet pajamas.” Yet his perfect lunch was gazpacho, grilled cheese and a brownie at the Garden of Eatin’ Café inside Gardener’s Supply in Williston.

“He just loved French cheeses,” said Loretta de Marne, the younger of his two daughters. “I think of him as he aged so beautifully, like a French cheese and wine. But we always laugh because he had terrible taste in wine.”

During his near-century on Earth, Henri had more lives than a litter of kittens. “He was constantly reinventing himself,” said Kitty Werner, his older daughter.

“Henri was unique, a descriptive word that is the same in both French and English, his principal languages,” said Matthys Levy, a close friend and fellow Frenchman. The two of them wound up as neighbors at Wake Robin retirement community in Shelburne.

“Renaissance” means “rebirth” and is another word shared by both languages. Surviving his war-struck youth seemed to grant Henri the will to pursue any endeavor.

“My father [learned] to ski when he was 40,” Loretta said. “So whatever he put his mind to, he was going to learn it in every detail.”

Henri (center) in the 1960s Credit: Susan Donnis

Henri was born in Paris in 1925 and schooled at the famous Sorbonne University. His youth was scarred by the devastation of World War II. He recalls fleeing Paris at age 14 with his family in a memoir that he began before his death. Just as he and his mother stepped out of the hot car for a break, they heard the scream of approaching Nazi warplanes. “My mother shoved me into the ditch. She dove in and threw herself on top of me as the planes came over with guns blazing,” Henri wrote.

The attack over, they were shocked to see nearby the dead bodies of a mother and daughter. “A couple inches to the left and my mother and I would have suffered the same fate,” Henri wrote.

Staying fed was a challenge, given that so much food was commandeered by the German army. Henri was living with his grandparents, lusting after cantaloupes in a nearby farmer’s field. What the Nazis didn’t take had to go to market. Henri vowed to have a cantaloupe all to himself when the war ended.

At 17, Henri volunteered for the French Red Cross and, a year later, joined the French 2nd Armored Division, eventually serving alongside U.S. general George Patton’s Third Army. At war’s end, Henri decided he would immigrate to America. That decision led him to the U.S. Embassy, where he obtained both a visa and a wife.

South Carolina-born Muriel Mann, a consular employee, was charmed by the young Frenchman. They married and moved to Bethesda, Md., a suburb of the nation’s capital, where budding foreign service officers had to learn languages. Henri taught French to students at a private boys’ school, the University of Maryland and the Pentagon. The couple had three children, Kitty, Philip and Loretta, and moved to the upscale suburb of Potomac, Md.

But Henri had an itch; he was a DIY guy with a jones for engineering. In 1957, driving on River Road to work one day, he noticed a home renovation business for sale — a perfect way to scratch that itch, he thought. He renamed the business de Marne & Day and specialized in home construction and the three Rs: restoration, remodeling and renovation.

But a fourth R, renaissance, beckoned. Henri had developed a passion for downhill skiing. During the 1970s, he sold the business — it retained his name for many years — and moved to Vermont. He quickly became proficient and got a job as a ski instructor at Bromley Resort in Peru, Vt.

“It’s amazing that he started skiing so late,” Loretta said. She explained that he learned at Bromley using the graduated length method, in which beginners start on three-foot-long skis, then move to four- and five-foot-long skis. “They had you skiing in a week,” she said.

After skiing Mad River Glen in Fayston, Henri’s allegiance shifted. He began teaching at Mad River and built his fantasy home on a Waitsfield hill with a commanding view of the valley.

However, man — or Henri, anyway — could not live on schuss alone. He’d kept up with building design and science. He’d even been called as an expert witness in some related civil litigation and was frustrated by the advice on home repairs that he’d seen in the newspapers. Thus was born “About the House With Henri de Marne,” a newspaper column that began in the Burlington Free Press, became syndicated in 1980 and eventually grew to appear in more than 100 newspapers during its 42-year run.

As detailed in his column, Henri had his favorite products for keeping things in good order. He was a big fan of Nok-Out for eliminating foul odors, such as skunk spray and cat urine. Shopping at Hannaford one day, Henri was approached by a woman who asked if he was the columnist. The woman gasped when the stranger nodded yes. “Wait right here. Don’t move!” the woman admonished and quickly strode away. She proceeded to run up and down the grocery store aisles trying to locate her husband, all the while yelling, “Fred! Fred! The Nok-Out Man is here! He’s here! You’ve got to come meet him!”

Henri canoeing in the 1950s Credit: Susan Donnis

Henri’s other outdoor passion was canoeing. He loved the whitewater runs near Great Falls in Potomac. After moving to Vermont, he mostly stuck with a kayak on the Saranac Lakes in New York or Lake Iroquois closer to home. Kitty said her dad fancied himself an inventor or an innovator, and he had a big idea to clean up Lake Iroquois, which was being overrun by water milfoil, an invasive submerged aquatic weed.

“So he invented this machine that would be pulled behind a motorboat,” Kitty explained. The MacGyvered device used a comblike metal board and part of a tennis net to dredge the weed. “He was like a kid in the candy store,” she continued.

“He had a great time inventing this, but it bombed,” Kitty said with a laugh. “He never took into account all the rocks on the lake bottom.”

Henri and Muriel divorced in the 1980s, and he busied himself with skiing and consulting on building projects. Then came a second go-round at the altar, and it was clear that Henri was going to marry up — his first meeting with the wife-to-be, in 1993, was on a roof.

The roof was on a house in Essex owned by Susan Donnis, a psychologist, and it was leaking. “I was very angry,” she said. “I found out that this Henri de Marne had installed the roof two years before I bought it, so I called him and demanded a meeting.”

The pair met on the roof; Henri determined that the shingles he’d used were defective. He filed the warranty claim and oversaw the installation of the new roof.

Henri did not send a bill. After almost a year had passed, “I decided the decent thing to do was to take him out to dinner, as a thank-you,” Susan recalled.

The thank-you dinner turned into a relationship, but it took the younger Susan almost a decade to agree to marry Henri due to her reservations about their 22-year age difference. (He was in his late sixties when they met.) Still, these were happy years, with Henri continuing his column and occasionally consulting on home remodeling.

In 2006, the winter after their wedding, Susan and Henri had a terrible car accident while driving home from skiing. Both suffered injuries, but Henri’s were far more serious — he’d sustained a break in the spine at his neck. “It took me six months to stop worrying about him being paralyzed,” Susan said. “This was when I first began to think about Wake Robin.”

Loretta recalled that her dad was angry after the accident.

“He was probably 80 at that time, and he never looked or acted his age,” she said. “This really changed his life. I mean, he aged 20 years overnight.”

Henri was able to continue writing his column, but the pain from his injury prohibited many outdoor pursuits. In 2015, the couple moved to Wake Robin.

“Henri quickly adapted to his new surroundings, offering advice to the management concerning construction issues,” his friend Levy said. A longtime opera lover, Henri ran weekly listening sessions at the retirement home, providing his own CDs and DVDs, as well as commentary. When he praised Wake Robin’s cooks for a particular dish in his customary manner, the staff referred to it as “a baby Jesus moment.”

Henri also began writing a memoir that included his traumatic life in France during wartime.

“He was gutsy,” Susan said. “I guess when one comes of age in wartime, it can feel that life is short. One can adopt a fearful approach and timidly live life — or somehow be insulated from fear and rush headlong into risk-taking. Henri was the latter.”

Henri died after a lengthy illness on October 15, two months shy of his 99th birthday. As he was wheeled out to a waiting hearse, his body covered in a Quilt of Valor honoring his military service, friends and staff lined the corridor of Wake Robin’s Linden wing to see him off.

Perhaps the most poignant tribute came from a close friend of Henri and Susan’s who knew of the trauma endured by the young French boy. “We eat cantaloupe,” she declared, “and for us it is an occasion of gratitude and thoughts of Henri.”

The original print version of this article was headlined “‘He Reinvented Himself Many Times’ | Henri de Marne, December 20, 1925-October 15, 2024”