Eugene Lesesne of Homewood, Pennsylvania received an unusual present on his 102nd birthday Friday, November 19, 1999 -- the French Legion of Honor. Lesesne was the first black veteran of World War I in Western Pennsylvania to receive the medal. Jean-Pierre Collet, French consul for the Pittsburgh region, presented the medal, a white star suspended from a red ribbon to Lesesne in the Homewoodbranch of the Carnegie Library. Collet pinned the medal on Lesesne's coat, grasped him by both shoulders, kissed him on both cheeks and said: "In the name of the president ... I am naming you a chevalier of the Order of the Legion of Honor." The Legion of Honor was instituted in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte as an "honor to recognize military bravery and civilian merit." It continues to this day as France's most coveted national honor. Last year, for the 80th anniversary of the end of World War I, French President Jacques Chirac decreed that any soldier of any nation who served on French soil for the Allied cause in World War I would be eligible for the medal. Members of Lesesne's church, the Community of Reconciliation in Oakland, began the application requirement of validating Lesesne's service in France, starting with his 1919 discharge papers.
 
 

U.S. Representative William Coyne's staff worked with the Pentagon to affirm Lesesne's membership in the 331st Labor Battalion of the U.S. Quartermaster Corps, which served in France between July 1918 and March 1919. That fulfilled the condition set forth by Chirac. Then Collet followed through with the government in Paris. Lesesne can clearly recall the months of war, which for him, involved service behind the lines, felling trees and thickets to provide clear fields for defensive fire in case of a German advance. He remembers hearing the frequent booming of artillery in the distance.
 
 

Born and raised in Sumter County, South Carolina, Mr. Lesesne moved to Pittsburgh after his Army service in search of work. One of his first jobs was with a poultry man. He spent long hours working with his hands in cold briney water. After that he took a job with the Allis-Chalmers plant on the North Side from which heretired in 1965, shortly before the corporation moved the plant to Ohio.
 
 

As a devout Presbyterian, Mr. Lesense joined the late Rev. Harold Tolliver in 1968 as a founding member of the interracial, ecumenical Community of Reconciliation. He sang tenor in the church's choir for many years. Members of his congregation have described him as a quiet, salt-of-the-earth typeworking man.
 
 

Mr. Lesense is a widower with eight grandchilden. Three of his four children are living, including Margaret Leach and Mary White, with whom he lives. In recent years, he has spent his days at the Homewood-Brushton Senior Citizens Center. The center furnished a birthday cake for Mr. Lesense's 102nd birthday celebration which followed the Legion of Honor ceremony. The cake carried a facsimile of a picture of Lesesne as a young soldier in his World War I uniform.
 
 

Adding even more interest to the story of the receipt of the medal is the history of how Lesesne's forebears in South Carolina chose a French name once they were freed from slavery and required to register a surname for census purposes. Lesense's grandfather, Antrum, was one of five brothers. Only one decided to take the Plowden surname of their former owner. Antrum and two others chose the name of a man named Major Lesesne, widely known in South Carolina as a kind and honorable man. The brothers walked 30 miles to the Lesense's home near Mayesville (in Sumter County) to ask his consent, which according to family records, he readily gave.