For decades, Samuel Meyer has been New Orleans’s most celebrated hatter, devoted to a now-iconic business founded by his grandfather in 1894, and steering it into its second century with a fifth generation of family members in training.
On Tuesday, the 99-year-old military veteran was celebrated for an altogether different achievement: becoming a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor in recognition of his service to the allies during the second world war.
Meyer received France’s highest decoration, military or civil, in a ceremony at the city’s National World War II museum, hosted by Laurent Bili, the country’s ambassador to the US.
Bili paid tribute to Meyer’s war service in the UK, Belgium, France, and Germany for the US army air forces, and said such an honor could only be earned on merit.
“To receive this award from the French government is testament to the bond that exists between our two nations,” Meyer said.
“The bond between our two nations is unbreakable. And I am honored to have played a small part in strengthening it.”
Meyer was drafted at 18 and became a corporal with a fighter squadron of the Ninth Air Force. He served as an armorer, loading bombs and ammunition on the P-38 fighter planes that were a mainstay of the allied aerial campaign that helped liberate much of western Europe.
When the war ended, he was discharged from service and returned to New Orleans, where he started working for the family business, Meyer the Hatter on Saint Charles Avenue in the city’s downtown.
He still works there three days a week, five months short of his 100th birthday, alongside his wife, who is also in her nineties. Marcelle Meyer was among the family members and friends who attended Tuesday’s ceremony.
The National Order of the Legion of Honor was established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802, less than a century before Meyer’s grandfather, also called Samuel, opened the family business.
Meyer the Hatter has become a tourist attraction in New Orleans in its own right, winning popularity with tourists and celebrities alike.
He told Nola.com that he is often visited by people who don’t wear hats or want to buy one, but who are eager instead to just come in and talk.
Generations of musical icons from the city known as the Big Easy have also shopped there, he said, including the late Fats Domino and Dr John, as well as visiting musicians such as Elvis Costello, who bought two homburgs last month.
