Ramsey County History – Summer 2000: “Dilettante, Renaissance Man, Intelligence Officer: Jerome Hill and His World War Two Letters from France to His ‘Dearest Mother’”

Dilettante, Renaissance Man, Intelligence Officer: Jerome Hill and His World War Two Letters from France to His ‘Dearest Mother’
Author: G. Richard Slade

Using letters Jerome Hill sent to his mother during World War II, the author chronicles the experiences of Hill, then an air intelligence officer in the U.S. Army Air Forces and grandson of the Empire Builder, James J. Hill, in Southern France and Paris soon after their liberation by the Allies. As a dilettante born of immense privilege, Jerome Hill matured after earning his commission in the Air Force. His letters are personal, carefully avoiding mention of places or people that might have been of value to the enemy. As he returns to the studio he’d left when France fell to the Germans in 1940, as well as to the apartment he had had in Paris, he conveys his mix of emotions at what he finds with considerable flair.

PDF of Slade article