Coming Back Together From Across the Ocean

Chatham Borough Mayor Nelson Vaughan's journey to a town about 65 miles east of Paris was more than just a trip.

It was an effort to re-establish a bond between two towns that are thousands of miles apart but have been linked together since the early to mid-1980s.

Sister Cities International, a non-profit which runs the sister city program in towns across the country, aims to strengthen ties between U.S. municipalities and international communities. Chatham and Esternay are tied together by the program, but the two sides have not had a whole lot of contact since the 1980s, when former Mayor Jackie Marvin and former state Senator Leanna Brown, who lives in Chatham Borough, were involved in bringing the two together.

So when Vaughan was planning a personal trip to Europe with his two sons, he thought it would be a good idea to stop by Esternay for a day and meet the mayor and fire officials there.

Vaughan marched in the Bastille Day parade there July 14. He also met Mayor Patrice Valentin and several fire officials and enjoyed a multi-course meal at Valentin's home.

"It was nothing but generosity and politeness," Vaughan said.

Vaughan said he feels it is important to reconnect with Esternay, which officially became Chatham's sister city when the two towns signed what is called a twinning charter in 1987. Before that, however, Chatham residents had gone to visit Esternay, and Esternay residents had come to Chatham (see PDF at right for more detail). The two towns are similar, he said, in a lot of ways.

"I always thought in the back of my mind— wouldn't it be nice to re-establish the relationship?" Vaughan said.

Brown, who was part of the political delegation that established the relationship in the mid-1980s, said the two towns connected when exchange students from Esternay came to visit New Jersey.

Both towns, Vaughan said, have very dedicated fire departments. He called the two "strikingly similar." And when he visited the Esternay fire house, Vaughan was surprised to find the Morris County flag flying above the trucks.

The night before the Bastille Day parade, the town hosts a fireworks ceremony by a large castle in the center of town. When Vaughan was out and about in town, he heard there was someone living in Esternay at that point who grew up in Chatham, went to Chatham High School and married a Frenchman.

Occurences like that, he said, made him realize the bond between the two goes beyond the fact that they are sister cities in name.

"It was really overwhelming," he said.

When she was involved in bringing Esternay and Chatham together, Brown said, she also found that when the two cities got closer, Chatham residents themselves got closer to one another as well.

People from the township and the borough, she said, would gather together at the borough fire house to welcome the French visitors. In the process, she said, they would meet new people in town they didn't know about beforehand.

"(It's good for) forming relationships, not only between the French and Americans, but (between) people who live in this area," Brown said.