Julia Child In The OSS

“Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.”

 Julia Child

Julia Child was the first celebrity chef on television. Her influence was so great that her kitchen has been preserved in the Smithsonian Institute!

Julia Child’s Kitchen at the Smithsonian

An entire generation of chefs, aspiring chefs, and those who merely wish they could cook grew up watching this cheerful, chatty and not always completely successful chef at work.

In addition to inspiring Americans to be more adventurous in their cooking and eating, Julia Child did something else. She made the process of cooking seem joyful and loving and happy. Amateur chefs were not afraid to make a mistake because Julia Child occasionally did. As one who loves to cook, but lacks the skills of a master chef, I happily embrace the laughter and self-deprecating wit of Julia Child in the kitchen. Today we have cable networks devoted to cooking and celebrity chefs abound. I am always amazed when I watch these artists create phenomenal meals with seeming ease. But give me Julia Child’s cramped kitchen and occasional mistakes any day-that I can relate to!

One of the most fascinating stories about Julia Child is her work during World War II for the OSS, the predecessor of today’s CIA.

Although coming from a privileged background that included fancy private schools and an Ivy League degree, Julia Child was simply not temperamentally suited to the life of a California debutante. After graduating from Smith College, she took a job in New York City as an advertising copywriter. She had hoped to become a novelist. As she explained:

“In my generation, except for a few people who’d gone into banking or nursing or something like that, middle-class women didn’t have careers. You were to marry and have children and be a nice mother. You didn’t go out and do anything. I found that I got restless.”

That restlessness, and the deeply instilled sense of duty and patriotism, led her to try and enlist during World War II.

“I was going to be a great woman novelist. Then the war came along and I think it’s hard for young people today, don’t you, to realize that when World War II happened we were dying to go and help our country.”

However, the women’s services of the day rejected her because at 6’2″, Child was too tall. Undeterred, she joined the mysterious, adventurous, clandestine OSS. While her work did not involve actual spying, her talent for organization, her tremendous work ethic, her razor-sharp mind and her inherent cheerfulness led her to become an extremely effective aide to “Wild Bill” Donovan, the leader of the American spy forces.

She served in dangerous locales throughout Asia, in Ceylon and China,

Julia Child’s Bunk In The OSS

finding office work boring and adventure to be exhilarating. She met her future husband, Paul, who was an agent in the field during her service. The two became an unbreakable team. During her time in Asia she began to develop a taste for food that went far beyond the bland, uninspired cuisine of the Pasadena of her childhood. When Paul’s work for the spy services took them to France after the end of the war, Julia Child took her first French cooking class – and, eventually, the worlds of cooking and television would never be the same!

Julia Child did not have to serve in World War II. Her commitment to her country is  merely a lovely reminder of why that era has been called, “The Greatest Generation.”