1989 – Visiting the Ribouds and Lacombes at Vieux Moulin

Arriving with Jean Gwinn Riboud, Bill Bowe visits his Aunt Nancy’s country home outside Paris in Vieux Moulin and is greeted by Nancy, Jacques and Livie Riboud and Henri and Betsy Riboud Lacombe.

Bill Bowe first visited France to visit his Aunt Nancy and Uncle Jacques Riboud in 1963, his junior year in college. Stationed in the Army in Washington, DC during the Vietnam War, he spent leave time in 1969 to visit the family and the then scene of the War’s Paris Peace Talks. He got back to Paris and again immediately after he left the Army in 1971. Bill again returned to France in 1977, 1980 and 1984.

Then, when Bill joined Encyclopaedia Britannica in Chicago as General Counsel in 1986, he frequently had a chance to see family in France on his many European business trips. These visits continued until his retirement from EB in 2014. Between 1989 and 2005 Bill usually took a 8mm Sony video camera along on his trips, together with his ever present 35mm Nikon camera.

The visit recorded above in 1989 was to the Riboud family’s home outside Paris in Vieux Moulin in the forest of Compiegne.