Dominique H. Vasseur Family Papers

Dominique H. Vasseur (1951-)

Dominique Henri Vasseur, also known to family members by the nickname “Nick,” was born on May 8, 1951, in Soisy-sous-Montmorency, France. Dominique lived with his parents, Jacques H. Vasseur and Mary Burmeister Vasseur, at Le Bourget (a suburb of Paris) until his father’s 1953 death. He traveled to the United States in late 1953 and was raised by his mother in her hometown, Springfield, Ohio. Dominique graduated from Springfield North High School in 1969.

He attended Oberlin College from 1969-1973. In 1971, Dominique created the posters for Fernando Arrabal’s Théâtre Panique, which was put on by Oberlin’s French workshop. Dominique received a B.A. in art history and French literature in February of 1974.

Following his time at Oberlin College, Dominique enrolled in graduate school at the University of Chicago, graduating with a Master of Arts in the History of Art in 1976. He served as the secretary to Dr. Harold Joachim (1975) and as a research assistant for J. Patrice Marandel at the Art Institute of Chicago (1976-1977) during and after his master’s program. Following that, Dominique worked as a gallery technician at the Richard Gray Gallery in Chicago (1978). He returned to the Art Institute of Chicago, where he worked in the registrar’s office as an assistant (1978-1979).

Dominique returned to Ohio, beginning work as the Dayton Art Institute’s assistant curator of European Art and museum registrar in 1979. He served in various curatorial and leadership roles at the Dayton Art Institute through 1999. From 2000 through 2005, Dominique was the Deputy Director and Curator of the Springfield Museum of Art. In 2005, Dominique joined the Columbus Museum of Art as Associate Curator of European Art. He served in curatorial and leadership roles at the Columbus Museum of Art until 2015, when he retired as the Director of Curatorial Administration and Chief Curator.

Mary Burmeister was born on April 29, 1921, to Frederick W. and Ruth Heileman Burmeister. She was raised in Springfield, Ohio, and graduated from Springfield High School in 1939.

Mary attended Oberlin College from 1939-1943. There, she studied romance languages and lived in French House (La Maison Française), a dorm in which only French was spoken in common spaces. Mary graduated from Oberlin College in 1943 with a bachelor’s degree. She continued her studies at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, from which she earned a degree in library science in 1944. After library school, Mary returned to Oberlin, where she rented a room from a professor of American History and worked in the cataloging department of the library.

During World War II, a French House classmate at Oberlin College who had enlisted for military service arranged for other French House students, including Mary Burmeister, to correspond as pen pals with members of a group of Free French servicemen in training at the US Naval Base in Jacksonville, Florida. Mary exchanged letters with a French serviceman named Raymond Duffour beginning in early 1943. Raymond’s letters frequently incorporated mention of his close friend, Jacques Vasseur, often using the nickname “Jacquot” (Jimmy, in English). When Raymond sustained a hand injury in July of 1944, Jacques began to type letters to Mary on Raymond’s behalf. Raymond and Mary’s correspondence stopped in August of 1944.

In January of 1945, Jacques and Mary began to exchange letters with one another directly. Mary returned to Springfield to work at the Warder library in 1946. She lived with her parents.

Mary traveled to France to meet Jacques and his mother in 1948. She returned from the trip engaged, and the Mary and Jacques were married in France on June 27, 1950. Stories of their unconventional romance and years of letter writing sparked newspaper coverage in Ohio and Paris. Their son, Dominique, was born in 1951.

After her husband’s death in 1953, Mary returned to Springfield to raise their son. She worked as a librarian in Springfield from 1954 until her retirement in 1979. Many of those years were spent working for the school library system. Mary Burmeister Vasseur lived with her son, Dominique, in Columbus until her death on November 2, 2020.

Jacques Henri Vasseur was born to Henri E. and Simone Lechêne Vasseur in Casablanca, Morocco, on June 28, 1920. Following his father’s death in Morocco, Jacques was raised by his mother and stepfather, Lucien Hauser, in Paris, France.

Jacques joined the French Navy in 1937. He trained at École des Mécaniciens, Rochefort-Soubise, and the Naval Academy in Lanvéoc-Poulmic. In June of 1940, Jacques joined the Free French forces.

As part of the Free French Naval Air Forces, Jacques served in England, on the Westernland, and in several French colonies. In October 1940, he was sent to the U.S. Naval Training Base at Jacksonville, Florida, where he began a pen-pal correspondence with Oberlin College student Mary Burmeister. In 1942, Vasseur was stationed at Bir Hakeim for two months. In March of 1944, Jacques was stationed in Agadir, Morocco, where he would remain for the duration of the war. In total, he served in the French armed forces for 99 months (just over eight years).

Jacques returned to Paris in the summer of 1945. He worked as a car mechanic until 1946, when he was hired to work at the control tower at Le Bourget airport. After exchanging letters with American Mary Burmeister for several years, Jacques and Mary married in June of 1950. They had a son, Dominique, in 1951.

Jacques Vasseur was diagnosed with cancer in 1951 and died on August 4, 1953.

SOURCES CONSULTED

Black, Jane A. “Museum has New Deputy Director.” Springfield News-Sun. January 6, 2000. “Columbus Museum of Art Announces Retirement of Chief Curator Dominique H. Vasseur,” Art Daily, January 21, 2015. Art Daily.

Student files, Mary Burmeister Vasseur and Dominique H. Vasseur (RG 28).

Vasseur, Dominique H. “The Touchstone of Memory: My Parents, Oberlin College, and the Second World War.” American Imago 75, no. 2. (2018): 237-265. American Imago.

Note written by Emily K. Rebmann