Anne-Marie Tate was born in Morocco, where she lived until the age of 18. Her parents, Rousselle, and her older brother had settled there in 1927, in the small Algerian border town, Oujda. Her father, a topographical engineer, worked there for the land registry services in Morocco until 1962.
It was thanks to the friends that the Rousselle family made in Switzerland, Mr. and Mrs. Furer, that Moral Rearmament entered their lives, first in 1947, a year after the opening of Caux, while the first Germans were allowed to leave their country. His parents were very touched by their presence at the same time as that of a French socialist deputy, Irène Laure . As for Anne-Marie, she came to Caux for the first time, in 1954. She was struck by the joie de vivre of the young people with whom she became friends, and one of whom in particular played a decisive role in her life by introducing her to the practice of inner listening and reference to the values of honesty, purity, selflessness and love. She was not yet 18 years old. Her mother had died and her father had remarried.
At the invitation of this Swiss family, Anne-Marie returned to Switzerland the following year, she took courses at a secretarial school and not wanting to return to her father and stepmother, she found work in Lausanne, as secretary to a stockbroker at the New York Stock Exchange. She met her friends from Caux regularly, and after four years accepted the offer to resign from her job to permanently join the Moral Rearmament teams.
Within the Moral Rearmament teams she met Alain Tate. Alain himself had experienced Moral Rearmament in London in 1950. But he felt called to return to France and to identify himself completely with France, to the point that he renounced his British nationality. Hired by American Express, he experienced union struggles there, then through his promotions, was entrusted with American Express agencies in military bases in several regions in France. Alain resigned to also devote himself to RAM. Alain and Anne-Marie married in 1970.
Exactly three years later, they found themselves drawn into international engagement, particularly in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. There they formed very close ties with citizens of these three countries, ties that lasted throughout their lives. Then it was the United States, finding members of the Vietnamese in particular who had fled Vietnam after the North Vietnamese forces took power. Then it was Lebanon, engaged in a fratricidal war, again Canada alongside young Asians invited to present a show, “Song of Asia”, throughout the country, from West to East, at the invitation of a committee of Native American Reserve Chiefs.
But, remaining faithful to their country, Anne-Marie and Alain actively participated in initiatives taken in France or from France, as well as in efforts to bridge the gap separating the population from North Africa and the native French.
Anne-Marie and Alain had the pleasure of 51 years of marriage. Alain died in 2021.
