Family
Reacher's maternal grandfather Laurent Moutier was a furniture restorer in Paris. Thirty years old in 1914, he volunteered for the French Army with the outbreak of World War I and fought at Verdun and The Somme. Between 1919 and 1929 he was commissioned to produce wooden legs for wounded veterans. Josephine Moutier was his only child. He died in 1974 at the age of ninety, in his last days facing unflinchingly the approach of death. The young Reacher met him three times and liked him ("Second Son").
Reacher's mother Josephine Moutier Reacher, born in France, was 30 years old when Reacher was born. She met Reacher's father in Korea and married him in Holland (The Enemy). She was widowed in 1988, and died in 1990 at the age of 60 of cancer. When she was only 13, she joined the French Resistance and under the alias "Beatrice" worked with Le Chemin de Fer Humain (the Human Railroad), saving 80 men. She garroted a schoolmate, a boy who threatened to give her up to the Nazis. Josephine Moutier was awarded the Médaille de la Résistance (the Resistance Medal) for her heroism.
Reacher's father (Stan Reacher) was a Marine captain, who served in Korea and Vietnam. His service in the United States Marine Corps kept his family continually moving all around the world to various military bases. He died in 1988. When describing his father, Jack is quoted as saying, "(He was) A plain New Hampshire Yankee with an implacable horror of anything fancy...he had no use for wealth and excess. Very compartmentalized guy. Gentle, shy, sweet, loving man, but a stone-cold killer. Next to him I look like Liberace. After military service, "there was no place left for people like him".
Jack had only one sibling, brother Joe Reacher. Two years older than Jack, Joe was born on a military base in the Philippines. Jack used to help Joe beat up the kids who gave him trouble in school, and vice versa. Joe was also a West Point graduate, and spent five years in Military Intelligence before joining the Treasury Department. He never won any of the "good medals", only the "junk awards." Joe died at the age of 38, having arranged a meeting with a potential investigation subject (see Killing Floor and Without Fail). Because he was killed in the line of duty, his name can be found on the Treasury's Roll of Honor.
Read more about this topic: Jack Reacher
Famous quotes containing the word family:
“My ambition for station was always easily controlled. If the place came to me it was welcome. But it never seemed to me worth seeking at the cost of self-respect, or independence. My family were not historic; they were well-to-do, did not hold or seek office. It was easy for me to be contented in private life. An honor was no honor to me, if obtained by my own seeking.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Freud is all nonsense; the secret of neurosis is to be found in the family battle of wills to see who can refuse longest to help with the dishes. The sink is the great symbol of the bloodiness of family life.”
—Julian Mitchell (20th century)
“It is as when a migrating army of mice girdles a forest of pines. The chopper fells trees from the same motive that the mouse gnaws them,—to get his living. You tell me that he has a more interesting family than the mouse. That is as it happens.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)