Cover photo for Frances Froidevaux's Obituary
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Frances

Frances Froidevaux

d. September 30, 2011

Frances Love Froidevaux lost a valiant battle with cancer on Friday, September 30, while staying at the family's summer cabin in Teton Valley, Idaho. In her 69 short years, Francie packed several lifetimes of travel, artistic pursuits, and friendships that spanned the globe. Born in St. Louis, MO, to Jane (Matteson) and Dr. John David Love, she grew up in Wyoming, graduated from University Prep in Laramie, Cottey College in Missouri, and the University of Wyoming. While studying French at the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, she met and married geologist Claude Froidevaux. Settling initially in Switzerland, they returned to the United States upon Claude's receipt of a scholarship to Yale.

Together they raised three children - Ben, Zoe, and Rachel - and as a family lived in Oklahoma, Singapore, Indonesia, Wyoming, and Idaho. They continued to enjoy traveling, with multiple family trips over the years to Hawaii, Mexico, throughout Europe, as well as to more exotic locales such as the island of Bali, Borneo, Malaysia, Jordan and Mali in West Africa. They had been eagerly looking forward to visiting the Mediterranean island of Malta on a family trip planned for the spring.

Francie's skilled and spirited guitar playing and lovely singing voice graced many a social gathering, and even a college radio show, throughout her younger years. Always an avid knitter and weaver of all manner of fibers, her artistic talents also grew to include weaving delicate miniature baskets out of pine needles. Francie was a voracious reader (in several languages) and an especially adept writer, maintaining lively, lifelong correspondences with friends and pen-pals worldwide. While raising her family, she also actively contributed to her community by writing a weekly newspaper column, working for local animal shelters, tutoring foreign exchange students in ESL and teaching French at a local community college. In the 1980s she established her local elementary school system's first foreign language program.

Passionate about family history, Francie was most recently in the process of completing a manuscript for the sequel to Lady's Choice, a book published in 1994 which she co-authored with her sister Barbara, chronicling the courtship and true "love story" of her paternal grandparents John and Ethel Love, and their life raising a family on the Love Ranch in remote central Wyoming.

Francie will be fondly remembered by a world of international friends who enjoyed her vibrant wit, her sense of adventure and intellectual curiosity, her culinary and musical artistry and creativity, and her extraordinary kindness to pets and people alike. She leaves behind her beloved husband Claude and her children Ben (of Neuchatel Switzerland), Zoe (of New York City), and Rachel (of Longmont, CO), as well as her mother Jane Love, brothers Charles and David, her sister Barbara, and several nieces and nephews. A memorial celebration of her life will be scheduled at a later date.

Contributions in her memory may be made to local NPR or PBS affiliates, or your local Animal Shelter.


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