Par
Daniel Chollet
Published on
Dec 2 2024 at 6:10 p.m.
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Wednesday, November 27, in Montigny-lès-Cormeilles (Val-d'Oise), at the Léonard-de-Vinci space and the adjacent René-Char room, packed with people, nearly 2,000 people participated in the tribute public to Jean-Noël Carpentier, the mayor (Mdp) of Montigny, who died suddenly a week earlier at the age of 54.
“We are all still in shock”
Family and loved ones, elected officials, personalities and especially Ignymontais came to honor his memory. “We are all still in shock,” admitted Claire Simiana, from the City’s communications department.
“Very open, smiling, he always had a kind word”
Residents with whom the mayor had established a close relationship. “Very open, smiling, he always had a kind word,” says Chantal. Her husband Christian admits that “this is the first time that the death of a politician has moved me to this extent”.
“We loved him”
Chantal remembers the mayor's tireless work to obtain the rehabilitation of the Sources residence where the couple has lived for 50 years. “We loved him,” says Florence, president of the Montigny football club, simply, who praises the qualities of openness, humanity and listening of this elected official “who often came to see us and who did not make any comments. difference between people.
“Everywhere we go, there is our mark”
Of her fifteen years spent running the town, Hélène says that “everywhere we go, there is our mark”. She mentions the Mégarama cinema on the Rd14, Place Lucy, “the three family gardens”.
While photos mixing municipal memories and personal and intimate moments parade on the big screen, Jean-Noël Carpentier's three daughters, Marine, Lizon and Zoé take the stage.
The latter, her voice strangled by emotion and sorrow, evokes with emotion this father who loved “hiking and partying with [ses] friends, who also had his own little character”, but who was above all “a great role model for the three of us”.
“Dad, you showed us what it meant to be a man of convictions, a man of values and a man of heart. Today, you leave your three daughters, but you also leave some 20,000 other children, the Ignymontains. We find life unfair, you still had so much to live and do.”
“In four days, the isolated, localized tumor transformed into a bomb”
His wife, Claire Carpentier, speaking to her companion, talks about her meeting with him at Nanterre University.
The teacher explains that she tore up her speech project several times, “because it was never up to par. Normally, you make the speeches. It's so unfair. Usually you anticipated, you planned, but now, no one saw it coming, not even you. Monday, two days ago, I spoke to the pulmonologist on the phone. She doesn't understand. She had never seen this. We were optimistic. She also told me again. But in four days, everything came to a head. The isolated, localized tumor turned into a bomb.”
She spoke about the journey of this “workaholic” who, at the age of 50, had obtained a master’s degree in town planning. He also gave lessons to students. “Not bad for a dyslexic child who grew up in public housing, as you liked to say.”
Robert Hue recalled March 16, 2009, a municipal council evening, “a happy day”, when after 32 years in office, he left his chair and passed the tricolor sash to his young successor, met ten years earlier during a conference at Essec, in Cergy.
“In these very painful moments, I could not imagine having to give this speech, to be in this role and in these crazy circumstances.”
And to underline how “in just a few years”, Jean-Noël Carpentier “left his mark and his personality on this city and its inhabitants that he loved so much. Its establishment in Montigny is not by chance.”
Robert Hue stressed that he had noticed from this first meeting that “his militant commitment and his attachment to the ideas of social justice and progress [étaient déjà] deeply rooted in him.
He stressed that in his eyes, “the modernity of cities was going through a real ecological revolution. This is the meaning of the work he published in favor of a plant city. You have to plant, plant and plant again, he wrote. All this will not stop. It will be, Jean-Noël, your memory that will live forever.”
Author of four books
Jean-Noël Carpentier will have written four books: “The Mayor, the architect, the city center… and the shopping centers”, a pamphlet to counter the National Front, then “Let’s be green” in 2015 and finally “Plant city, city eco-friendly, when we finally green our cities.”
Robert Hue spoke of the Carpentier family's house, rue des Fauvettes, “very quickly became, to the rhythm of a restoration carried out with ingenuity, a warm family home, a place of meetings and exchanges between friends, where sometimes, late, we are remaking the world. A true space of happiness.”
The State will continue to support the city center project
The prefect, Philippe Court, spoke of a man “of convictions”, evoking the urban recomposition project undertaken around the Rd14, the commercial axis “which cuts the city in two”, to make it the new city center .
This “major project that he had designed”, this urban planning “challenge” “unanimously recognized or welcomed at the national level”, which it is “our duty, state services, to continue to support while thinking of him “.
The ceremony ended in song. Those that Jean-Noël Carpentier liked to listen to. We heard “Make me a place”, by Julien Clerc, “Lily”, by Pierre Perret and “What would I be without you”, by Jean Ferrat.
The election of the new mayor Thursday December 5
The municipal council will meet on Thursday, December 5 at 7 p.m., René-Char room, to elect the new mayor and his deputies.
A new elected official, from Jean-Noël Carpentier's list, will join the municipal council.
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