The Journey to becoming AFTally

The organization was founded circa 2006: among the founders were Jack Sigler (Napoleonic Scholar) who served as President and Treasurer; Dan Bensimon; David Greenberg; and Nico Wienders. They registered with the Secretary of State in Florida as Alliance Française de Tallahassee but found out that they could not use that name without the approval of the Alliance Française in France. They operated under the name Association Française of Tallahassee. Classes were offered at the former Progressive Center in Tallahassee.

We interviewed a longtime board member about the early history. Mary Bradford joined the Board around 2008 and became President in 2010. There had been attempts to have our organization approved as an official chapter, but the issue remained uncertain. At that time the Délégation Générale for the Alliance Française was in Miami. Mary made an appointment and went down to Miami to meet in person. She discovered that the French organization was reluctant to create new chapters in smaller, populated locations without a strong French cultural presence as they might not last; that the people starting them would run out of enthusiasm and without strong community support they would not succeed. (We have been pleased to see a positive response in Tallahassee.) Then we were informed that approvals are made only once a year in Paris. A dossier had to be prepared, both in English and in French. Annie Voisin prepared the translation in French and Margaret Barlow helped write our file as she was an experienced grant writer. We were officially approved in 2012 and could take the

name Alliance Française legally.



During those years Antoine Spacagna, Professor of French at FSU had directed another organization, Alliance Francophone-Aimé Cesaire. After his passing, that organization was merged into our chapter. Colette Clarke became president after Mary Bradford in 2018, followed by Annie Voisin. More recently, Margaret McColley has served as acting president.