Genevieve Marie-Louise Perrot King died peacefully on August 30, 2026, with her family by her side at York Nursing Home in Yorktown, Virginia. She was 99 years old, just a few months shy of her 100th birthday.
To tell Mom’s story properly, however, you have to begin a long way from Virginia, in a little town along the Somme River in northern France.
Genevieve was born in Corbie, France, and was raised on a small farm by her mother and grandfather. Her father, Camille Perrot, died when she was only five years old. Life asked Mom to be strong at a very young age—and, as anyone who knew her would tell you, strong she became.
Then came the war.
On the first Sunday in May 1940, with German forces approaching the outskirts of Corbie, 13-year-old Genevieve and her family were forced to abandon their farm. Before leaving, they buried the family silverware and china (Circa 1900) in the back garden so the Germans would not get it. They then left with little more than their personal belongings, loaded what they could onto a cart pulled by their two horses, and joined the great exodus of French civilians fleeing the German advance.
They traveled the backroads toward the western side of Paris and continued south into south-central France. There was little food and no money. For three months, Genevieve and her family traveled largely on foot, surviving in part through the kindness and generosity of French citizens who gave them food and assistance along the way.
It was a journey no child should have had to make.
They were finally able to return to Corbie at the end of August 1940. After three months on the road, they came home hoping to reclaim some sense of normal life.
Instead, they discovered that the Germans had looted their farm and artillery shells destroyed portions of the house and barn. What the family had been forced to leave behind was gone. However, the family silverware and china were found in the garden. They remain in the family today.
And still, they carried on.
Perhaps more than anything, those months help explain the woman Genevieve would become. She learned as a girl that possessions could disappear, circumstances could change overnight and sometimes survival meant simply putting one foot in front of the other and continuing down the road.
She was also exceptionally bright. During the German occupation of France, Genevieve graduated as valedictorian of her high school class in 1942 at just 16 years old, having skipped a grade. She earned the highest score in the Somme Department on the French secondary-school examination—an extraordinary accomplishment under extraordinary circumstances.
After high school, Genevieve earned a teaching degree. Her mother was a teacher, but Mom decided that particular family tradition would end with her. History, as it turned out, had something entirely different in mind.
With the liberation of France and the arrival of the American Army, Genevieve went to work for the U.S. Army, first as an interpreter and later as a supply specialist. Somewhere amid the enormous machinery of an Army moving through postwar France, a young French woman from Corbie met a young American soldier, Sergeant Edward King.
They fell in love.
Genevieve and Edward were married in 1946 in the magnificent and historic Reims Cathedral—the same cathedral where French kings had been crowned for centuries. It was quite a setting for the beginning of a marriage that would carry a French farm girl across an ocean and into a completely new life.
For the next 30 years, Genevieve was an Army wife, raising a family while moving between assignments in France and the United States. The Army became more than Edward’s profession; it became part of Mom’s identity and the fabric of her life.
Eventually, the King family landed at Fort Eustis, Virginia, where Genevieve began another long chapter of service to the U.S. Army, this time as a Civil Service Supply Specialist. She retired after three decades of federal civilian service.
Mom loved the Army. She valued deeply the friendships, traditions, camaraderie and sense of belonging that came with being part of the military community. From a frightened 13-year-old girl fleeing the German Army to a young woman working alongside the American soldiers who helped liberate her country, and ultimately to a respected Army civilian herself, the Army was woven through much of her extraordinary life.
Genevieve was smart, tough, determined and fiercely independent. She fought hard for everything she earned and for everything she believed she deserved. She possessed a formidable mind, tremendous perseverance and a strength of character that earned the respect of those who worked beside her. She could be stubborn—and those who loved her knew there was usually little point in trying to out-stubborn Genevieve King.
But beneath that toughness was a woman devoted to her family, proud of the life she had built and deeply connected to the people and institutions that had shaped her journey.
Genevieve was predeceased by her beloved husband, Edward King, and by her two eldest sons, Patrick and Philippe King. There is comfort in imagining that after so many years apart, those reunions have finally taken place.
She is survived by her loving son, Michael (Martie Ann); her grandchildren, William King (Gilda), Emily Denihan, Nichole Stone and Clifton King; and several great-grandchildren.
Genevieve’s life stretched across nearly a century and two continents. She lived through war and occupation, fled her childhood home with a horse-drawn cart, walked the roads of France as a refugee, witnessed the liberation of her country, crossed an ocean for love, raised a family, served the United States Army for decades and built a life in America without ever losing the strength and spirit of the French girl from Corbie.
Nearly one hundred years is a long life measured in time.
Mom’s life is better measured in something else: in courage, perseverance, family, service, sacrifice, laughter, arguments won—and probably a few she simply refused to lose—and in the generations who came after her.
From a little farm beside the Somme River to her final home beside the rivers of Virginia, Genevieve traveled a very long way.
It was quite a journey.
Au revoir, Mom. You earned your rest. You were loved, you will be remembered, and your story will travel with us.
Services are private.
In lieu of flowers, you can make a donation in her name to the Peninsula SPCA.
