Today's Date:

The Ambassador of France to the United States, H.E. François Bujon de l'Estang, will unveil a statue of General Charles de Gaulle on the square of the Maison Française at the Embassy of France in Washington on June 18, 2001 at 6:00 pm.

The bust of General de Gaulle is the work of sculptor Jo Davidson (1883-1952), an American francophile who was born in New York, but spent a large portion of his life in Tours, where he died. Jo Davidson finished this bust in the summer of 1944 during General de Gaulle's first visit to the United States. Acquired at the same time was a bust of President Woodrow Wilson by art collector Dr. Edward Wilson, this bust was offered to the French-American Foundation, which then decided to donate it to the Embassy.

The bust will constitute Washington's first French Memorial; its first stone, symbollically, was laid down on the 30th Anniversary of General de Gaulle's death on the 9th of November, 2000.

For five years, this Embassy and the French Associations of the Anciens Combattants, of the Souvenir Français and of the ACREFEU have commemorated the call of the 18th of June "that few French heard on that day, but that echoed long afterward throughout a resistant France" (Mr Lionel Jospin, June 18, 1998). Homage was thus payed to the man of June 18th, "a man of courage, honor and duty," who knew how to inspire "our impassioned compatriots with the light of hope and of the Resistance" and who would become, "in deciding to call on the French people to not surrender themselves, the incarnation of legitimacy"(dixit). On June 18, 1998, on a visit to the United States, it was Prime Minister Jospin, in person, who presided over the commemoration.

Representatives from the French community as well as the donors of the bust will attend the ceremony on June 18, 2001. Joining the French this year, as in years passed, will be representatives from the Embassy of the United Kingdom and from the Pentagon. This triple presence, as commented on by the prime minister in 1998, is "an emblematic symbol of the indestructible friendship between our peoples who have many times over the course of history and on all continents fought side by side."