{"id":17616,"date":"2026-03-10T14:37:02","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T14:37:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/uncategorized\/world-war-ii-sweethearts-reunited-after-75-years\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T06:04:05","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T06:04:05","slug":"world-war-ii-sweethearts-reunited-after-75-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/inspiring-stories\/stories-of-faith-and-hope\/world-war-ii-sweethearts-reunited-after-75-years\/","title":{"rendered":"World War II Sweethearts Reunited After 75 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Songwriter Sammy Cahn once wrote, love is lovelier the second time around. He’d likely get no argument from 97-year-old World War II veteran K. T. Robbins.<\/p>\n

\"K.
K. T. and Jeannine in 1944<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In June 2019, Robbins, who currently resides in Olive Branch, Mississippi, returned to France for the first time since the war to take part in the activities commemorating the 75th anniversary of D-Day<\/a>. While there, he experienced a reunion he could never have expected.<\/p>\n

In 1944, Robbins was stationed in the northeastern French village of Briey, where the 24-year-old staff sergeant was assigned to a mobile bakery unit that made 3,000 pounds of bread daily for the troops.<\/p>\n

Robbins soon met a 18-year-old local girl named Jeannine Ganaye (now Jeannine Pierson), who lived near his Army installation. The young couple quickly fell in love, but just weeks later, Robbins was informed that he would be sent to the front lines on the Eastern Front. The night before he was to depart, Ganaye’s family had him to dinner, where they fed him eggs, sausage and toast.<\/p>\n

Robbins told Maryse Burgot of the television network France 2<\/a> that when the sweethearts said their goodbyes, he told Ganaye, “Look, someday we\u2019ll see each other; I hope we do.”<\/p>\n

For her part, Ganaye began to teach herself English in hopes that she might have at least a basic command of the language if Robbins did come back for her. But it was not to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cI cried, of course, I was very sad,” Ganaye said, as she recalled watching Robbins depart. “I wish, after the war, he hadn\u2019t returned to America.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the war, Robbins returned to the U.S. and met Lillian, who worked at a shirt factory with his uncle and had begun exchanging letters with Robbins in the waning months of the war. The pair, who were soon wed, operated a Memphis, Tennessee, hardware store together for 50 years. They had been married for 70 years when Lillian passed away at the age of 92 in 2015.<\/p>\n

Ganaye married in 1949 and had five children before her husband died, but she never forgot her American soldier.<\/p>\n

Though Robbins hadn’t returned to France, he retained a small photograph Ganaye had given him when they parted. After Lillian’s death, his thoughts returned to his wartime sweetheart and he searched his trunk to find the photograph, which captured Ganaye standing, hands on hips, smiling at the camera.<\/p>\n

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