My Dad, Alphonse Joseph Sevigny, when he was a young Marine. contnued
The story of my parents is truly an "American story" of the triumph of individual love and family loyalty over Old World prejudices. His family was staunchly French-Canadian-Irish Catholic and hers was Norwegian-Swedish Lutheran. Neither family approved of their writing each other, much less the idea of their ever getting together at all. They met and went out together for a time after the war, but my dad's family put so much pressure on him that they parted for three years without any communication between them. Finally my dad wrote her again, they got together, and the rest is history, as they say. All because some high school girl took the time to write a letter to a young serviceman far from home.


When they were married, almost no one in my father's family [not even his parents] came to the wedding, although my dad's father told him privately to do whatever he wanted. The insurmountable objection was that my parents refused to get married in a Catholic church or promise to raise their children Catholic. In a provincial family where many of their cousins, aunts, and uncles were nuns and priests, this was total anathema. It was only when they learned my mom was pregnant [with me in mid-1951], that they relented and accepted her into the family, despite the fact we remained Protestants. I must point out that growing up my siblings and I were surrounded at the frequent Sevigny family gatherings by dozens of aunts, uncles, and cousins who lavished us all with unconditional love and loyalty. Many of my cousins were my best friends as kids and remain so today. In the later years of my grandparent's lives it was not unusual to have a Christmas dinner at his modest house in Point Richmond California with over fifty family members in attendance. Eventually they saw their grandchildren marry people of every race, ethnic group and religious persuasion, and it was never a problem. [The only thing my grandmother could never accept was the conversion of Mass from Latin to English in the '60's. She railed on that until the day she died when she was in her 90's!]

My mom, who is largely responsible for the preservation of the items I sent you, has every letter my dad ever wrote her, both during and after the war. Most of the letters she wrote to him were regrettably lost in transit during the war or afterwards. She has literally stacks of these letters, including the one he wrote when he found out the Japanese had surrendered. She has lent me some of them and I hope to scan them into the computer and eventually go through all of them. If I find something my father wrote I think might be of interest to you I will pass it on.

I regret now that my dad's memory is failing so badly that he cannot be interviewed, but I will try to write down some of the stories he told me years ago about his experiences. I think the experience of boxing may be catching up with him. Physically also, he is not as strong as he used to be. As I mentioned earlier, he did not talk about the war much until he started going to the unit reunions; then it seemed to be a little easier. His company was lucky. As the regimental weapons company they didn't suffer the staggeringly heavy casualties that many of the rifle companies suffered. Most of his company's men lived to die of natural causes, and they never forgot the men of the 4th Marines who didn't have that opportunity.
Bio by: Mark Sevigny