Leopoldville 1945 - President Roosevelt's Memorial Service

Just before midnight on Thursday April 12, 1945, US Consul General Buell received a visit from George Housiaux, the Director of Radio Congo Belge, who informed him that President Roosevelt had died in Warm Springs, Georgia a few hours earlier. Housiaux’s radio received news bulletins from the US and regularly rebroadcast US Office of War Information programming, but the station had already gone off the air for the day.

Radio Congo Belge in Leopoldville - 1943 (Ph. "News from Belgium and Belgian Congo" 1943

The next morning, Buell ordered the Consulate flag raised at half-mast and informed all official Americans. Shortly afterwards, George Carpenter, an American Baptist missionary who was acting General Secretary of the Congo Protestant Council (CPC, now Eglise du Christ au Congo), called offering to organize a memorial service at the British Baptist (BMS) chapel, which served the Protestant community of Leopoldville. Buell accepted and prepared press releases in French and English for the local papers, advising of the Sunday service. Senior Belgian officials came to the Consulate to express condolences, as did members of the Consular Corps. That evening, Vice Governor General Ermens, acting Governor General in Ryckmans’ absence, broadcast a tribute to FDR on the radio. US and Belgian flags hung at half-mast in front of government buildings, public squares and many private residences. US petroleum suppliers Socony Vacuum and Texaco closed their offices on Saturday. Official and individual letters of condolence flooded in, occupying the staff with drafting responses despite the closure of the Consulate.

The BMS Chapel in the 1940s (Ph. author coll.)

Sunday, the BMS Chapel was overflowing. With seating for only 300, senior officials were seated at the front, while many junior officials and civilians found seats in the back or gathered outside. Rev. Carpenter read his English remarks slowly to facilitate comprehension for non-English speakers. For his part, Buell drew upon the recent broadcast of President Truman’s remarks to frame his tribute. This emotional moment reflected a high-point in American-Belgian Congo relations during the war, which had seen an expansion of US military and commercial presence (May 23, 2011).

Rev. Carpenter leading the services (Ph. author coll., courtesy NARA)

Consul Buell conferring with VG Ermens after the service
(Ph. author coll,, courtesy of NARA)

At the time, George Carpenter was working on a major project. Since 1938, the American Baptists seconded him to CPC as Educational Advisor. Trained as an engineer before attending divinity school and entering missionary service in 1926, at his last assignment at Nsona Mpangu, near Matadi, he installed a micro-hydro system to provide electricity to the mission. Now he wanted to expand the availability of otherwise imported educational materials for mission schools with a full-service print shop. In August 1945, the Leopoldville Comité Urbain authorized construction of a two-story, 25,000 SF (2322M2) building near the BMS chapel on Ave Banning (Ave Kalemie) to house a book store, production facilities and a printing press. The new facility would replace the old bookstore of the Librairie Evangelique du Congo (LECO), established in 1935, which operated out of a room in the adjacent Union Mission Hostel (UMH) (Mar. 27, 2011). Fourteen mission groups and two Bible societies subscribed to the capital requirements. Construction began in 1946 and the facility opened in July 1948.

The LECO building in 1949 (Ph. flickr)

When Mobutu renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo the Republic of Zaire in 1972, LECO was renamed the Centre d’Editions et Diffusion (CEDI). The print shop was still producing documents in the 2000s, but a visit to the bookstore in 2004 only offered a few Bibles for sale and some school materials. Recent years have not been kind to the facility, but the building got a face-lift in 2016.

CEDI in 2011 (Ph. author coll.)

CEDI in 2017 (Ph. author coll.)