Page 47 - Bulletin, Vol.78 No.2, June 2019

By Warwick JONES

I am very sorry to learn of the death of my former colleague Jean-Jacques Chevron,
with whom I had long-standing if often rather incidental relationship. I had a particularly
close relationship with him at the Asian Regional Conference of the ILO in Manila in
1980. He was a very hard-working and loyal individual. I knew he was not in the best of
health, but it always comes as a bit of a shock to learn that another once close
colleague has passed away.

TRIBUTE TO CATHERINE LAWTON

By her sons, Pierre-Olivier DRÈGE and Marc LAWTON

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Our mother Catherine Lawton, Catherine Lévy, was born on the 24 of
February, 1922, in Paris. She had joined the UN shortly after the war,
as soon as the organization was created. She spent all of her
professional career there. Her professional choice was not made
randomly: contributing to maintain peace was the concern of her life.

Before that, she had indeed joined the resistance against the Nazi
occupying forces and, facing a narrowing grip, had reluctantly taken
refuge in Geneva after a dramatic exodus. Her mother was from that
city.

She and her parents were obliged to leave everything behind in Paris in 1940 once the
Germans arrived. Their apartment was plundered. Active within the OSE (child relief
program), she was able to assist dozens of Jewish children cross the border at the
Gaillard customs, saving them from deportation.

Trained simultaneously at the Geneva school of interpretation, Catherine worked first as
an officer in the French Army immediately after the Liberation, then at the Peace
conference at the Palais du Luxembourg in Paris before going to the USA. It was indeed
at Lake Success, Long Island, New York, close to New York City, that the UN started in
1946. Her first son was born there from her marriage to Stéphane Drège, himself a
translator at the UN. Four years earlier, Catherine’s father had died in 1945 in Paris.

Her mother’s health condition brought Catherine back to Europe and she settled in
Geneva in the early fifties, working at the Palais des Nations as a civil servant, using her
talents as a simultaneous interpreter in English and French, adding Spanish later. She
serviced the meetings on disarmament, as well as other highly sensitive international
negotiations, always concerned about the world political situation and of threats to
peace. Her missions took her to pre-Castro Cuba, Mexico, South America (Bolivia,
Peru), West Africa (Niger, Mali) and India (Delhi). Towards the end of her career, she
was called upon to head the interpretation services at the Palais des Nations.

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