FROM ST. LOUIS TO THE PANTHEON

On Tuesday, St. Louis native Josephine Baker was symbolically interred in the French Pantheon, the final resting place of the nation's most revered dead. She grew up with poverty and discrimination. After some successes in entertainment here and in New York, she traveled to France and a stellar career on the stage and in film. She later became a leader of the Resistance and, it is said, a spy. Charles de Gaulle made her a Chevalier of the Legion d'honneur. After her death, she was interred in Monaco. This week, she was, in a sense, laid to rest in the Pantheon in a symbolic casket containing soil from various locations that Baker had lived, including St. Louis, Paris, the South of France and Monaco. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_Baker           

Our loss, France's gain.