The 38th President of the US, Gerald Ford made an unexpected short visit to the island in March 1981, accompanied by his wife, Betty. Mr Ford, who was US President from 1974 to 1977, was on a tour of Europe and the Middle and Far East. He flew to Jersey from Shannon Airport in Ireland and had been due to go straight to Paris, but was diverted to the island because one of his companions on the flight, Mr D Keaton, hd recently bought a house here. Mr Ford’s stay was very brief, lasting only two hours, but he did say: “I intend to make a point of returning when I have time for a longer visit”.
In January 1945, two American officers, imprisoned in the German camp at South Hill, escaped and after an adventurous time in hiding on the east coast, eventually got away to France and the US Forces. One of these officers, Major Ed Clark, returned to Jersey with his wife, in April 1949, to call upon several Jersey residents who assisted him and his fellow officer, Lt George Haas, when they were in hiding from the Germans. Among these was Deputy Wilfred Bertram, of East Lynne, Fauvic, upon whose door the two men had knocked seeking assistance after spending the first couple of days of freedom laying low at the property of Oscar Laurens and family. The officers, refusing to stay inside the house, had stayed hidden in a thick hedge at the back of Mr Laurens house and then ventured on to the house, had stayed hidden in a thick hedge at the back of Mr Laurens house and hen ventured on to the home of Deputy Bertram from where they eventually made their escape.
Fleet Admiral Chester William Nimitz of the United States Navy with his son Commander Chester William Nimitz. As Commander in Chief of the US Pacific Fleet Admiral played a crucial role during the war and on 2 September 1945, signed as representative of the United States when Japan formally surrendered on board USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. His son, Chester Jnr, married a Jersey woman – Joan Labern, whom he he has met while she was visiting family in America. In May 1954, Fleet Admiral Nimitz, and his wife, along with Commander Nimitz, Joan and teir thre children, came on holiday to Jersey to visit Joan’s mother, Mrs F M Labern, who lived at 2 Lower Kings Cliff, Queens Road. The Evening Post was ranted an interview with the 69-year-old Admiral, who was still on the Active List and at the disposal of the Secretary of the Navy and the President of the United States. “My wife and I are very impressed with the beauty of this island”, he told the reporter. When asked to comment on current world affairs, he said: “I think that we should become accustomed to the cold war… Each year the Western Allies are finding out more about Russia’s plans. I think that if we all stick together and remain patient and strong, things will come out all right in the end”.
Jersey was starstruck in August 1952 when Hollywood came to the Island in the form of Yvonne de Carlo and Rock Hudson, who were filming a Technicolor production of Victor Hugo’s novel Toilers of the Sea. The stars are pictured here on the steps of the Water’s Edge Hotel in Bouley Bay. Hudson, who was described by the Evening Post at the time as “6 feet 3 inches tall, a real giant of a man”, was on his first visit to Europe. Directed by Raoul Walsh, the film, a swash-buckling tale set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic wars, was released in 1953 under the title Sea Devils. But despite shooting in Jersey, the story is set – as the film’s opening credits make clear – in Guernsey.
On Monday 5 April 1982, a film unit CBS News – one of the big three broadcast news networks in the US – was in the Island to make a feature on the Jersey walking stick. The workshops at L’Etacq where the sticks were made were besieged with newsmen. Walking sticks had been fashioned out of Jersey’s giant cabbage stalks since time past, but L’Etacq Wood crafts were then beginning to recognize their export potential. The growth industry had recently been featured by the BBS, and through the efforts of the CBS team, American viewers were also to be initiated into the mysterious of how a cabbage converts to a walking stick.
Jersey cows have been exported to America, where the purest specimens could command huge prices, since the 1850s. In 1919, Sybil’s Gamboge, a bull bred by Charles Morant, became the most expensive in the world when he was sold to an American syndicate for £65,000 – more than £1 million today. He was honored with a ticker-tape parade along Wall Street on his arrival in New York. When exports resumed after the Liberation, the demand for Jerseys was still high and above we see a party of Farmers from admiring an animal at Mr H P Le Ruez’s farm at homestead, St Peter in July 1954.
The first cargo of cattle from the island to cross the Atlantic by air leaving from Jersey Airport on 16 April 1956 bound for Belfast in a Livestock Transporters Dakota. From Belfast they were transferred to a larger aircraft for their journey to New York. Pictured to left to right, are breeder Mr Pallot, agent Hedley Mailard, cattle breeder Phillip Romeril (holding the cow), Mr H G Shepard, secretary of the Jersey Herd Book, and breeder Mr Renouf
On 25 May 1975, the great American actor James Stewart arrived in the Island to officially open the new nocturnal house at the zoo. His presence was unannounced, and so far the many visitors, the ambling star of such classic films as It’s A Wonderful Life and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, then 67, was an extra attraction. Mr Stewart, together with his wife, Gloria, who was a directer of the Los Angeles Zoo, and daughter Judy, toured the gardens before the short opening ceremony. After the tour, the Stewarts posed for photographs on the lawn with the zoos baby gorillas. James Stewart and Gerald Durrell are pictured here as well as they watch Jacqui Durrell (left) and Fleur Cowles, an American artist who accompanied the stewarts and who was a member of the American Wildlife Fund, play with two of the baby gorillas.