They love France, so when Notre Dame burned, they wanted to help

PARIS – Like many of the millions of tourists who visit Paris, Nick and Suzie Trivisonno, of Charlotte, North Carolina, would usually catch at least a glimpse of Notre Dame on their frequent visits to town. Often, the Trivisonnos, who are Catholics, would go to the cathedral and pray – for family, friends and peace.

On Saturday, they were back in Paris to offer a prayer for Notre Dame itself.

The centuries-old cathedral, badly damaged by fire in April 2019, reopened Saturday with an official ceremony, after a restoration carried out by roughly 2,000 workers. They labored on what President Emmanuel Macron of France has called “the most beautiful construction site of the century,” in an effort funded with about $900 million in donations from around the world. The Trivisonnos were among those who donated.

They were moved to contribute after watching, horrified, as a live video feed showed the mainstay of European history, culture and faith engulfed in flames and teetering on the brink of oblivion.

On Saturday morning, Nick Trivisonno, 77, and Suzie Trivisonno, 72, were taking coffee and croissants on the ground floor of the Hotel Regina Louvre on the right bank of the Seine. They were still buzzing from the night before, when they had attended a special meal for donors at the Tour d’Argent, a fine-dining establishment in the 5th arrondissement that dates to the 16th century. They were served plates of poached lobster and duck. But the main course was the view of Notre Dame through the big windows.

The cathedral is still partly clad in spindly scaffolding; the restoration job will not be fully done for years. But there, dramatically lit against the night sky, the cathedral seemed to announce to the donors, and the world, that it had recovered.

“I don’t think there was a closed mouth,” Suzie Trivisonno said. “The jaws were dropping.”

After the French, Americans were the second-largest donors to the Notre Dame project, offering an estimated $62 million to the cause, said Michel Picaud, president of Friends of Notre-Dame de Paris, a nonprofit group that helped lead the international fundraising push. Picaud said some 45,000 American donors gave to the charity alone, with many other Americans donating to similar groups.

That generosity was a testament to the enduring hold that France has on American hearts. Some people chipped in a few dollars. Others gave millions, including the Starr Foundation, of New York, and the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Foundation, of West Palm Beach, Florida.

In an interview, the Trivisonnos declined to disclose exactly how much they contributed. But on the website of the Friends of Notre-Dame de Paris, Nick Trivisonno noted that they gave enough to be recognized at the “Quasimodo’s Circle” level, which means a gift of at least $10,000.

“It’s always held a very special place in our hearts,” Suzie Trivisonno said. “It’s been kind of like a cornerstone for everything that’s important to us.”

The outpouring of American largesse for Notre Dame is part of a centuries-old tradition of mutual aid between the two countries that has survived many famous quarrels. It began with Louis XVI’s contributions to the American Revolution. In the 20th century, the United States pumped billions into France to help rebuild the country after World War II.

Neither gift was purely altruistic. Louis XVI opened his purse to the American rebels to weaken the British, France’s great 18th-century rival, while the Americans, according to a CIA memo made public in 2004, hoped that huge cash injections into France in the latter half of the 1940s would help quell intense postwar labor unrest fueled by French communists, and encourage the idea of “salvation beyond revolution.”

The Trivisonnos’ altruism was far less complicated. Neither has blood ties to France. They simply fell in love with the place.

He grew up lower-middle class in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. She grew up on a farm in New Mexico. He first saw Notre Dame in 1964, after talking his parents into letting him come on a trip to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. She first saw Notre Dame a few years later, when her parents, who had been working for the U.S. Foreign Service in Uttar Pradesh, India, stopped in the French capital on their way home.

They were married in 2000, and over the years, France continued to beckon. They are not alone. With 100 million international tourist arrivals last year alone, France, according to United Nations figures, is the most visited country in the world. The United States sends its backpackers, gourmands, art lovers, “Emily in Paris” fans and a group that travel planners often refer to as HNWIs, or high-net-worth individuals.

The Trivisonnos, who are retired, fall into the latter group. Nick Trivisonno made his living in finance, and as a chair and CEO of a provider of marketing information for consumer packaged goods companies. She was a classical clarinetist by training, but also had a long career in the business world.

Both of them, in recent years, have fallen hard for the pleasures of Burgundy, both the region and the prized (and often expensive) wine. Both are members of the Confrerie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, the worldwide organization of devoted Burgundy fans, and many of their recent trips to France have been to the storied region. There, on the small farms and in the homes of winemakers, Suzie Trivisonno said, their conversations often run on gestures and bonhomie when their limited French runs out.

“We’ve become fluent in French,” Suzie Trivisonno said, with a chuckle. “We just can’t understand a word they’re saying.”

Nick Trivisonno, who formerly served in the U.S. Army Reserve, noted that the bodies of thousands of U.S. soldiers are buried in French soil. Such, he said, are the strong and tangible roots of the friendship.

On April 15, 2019, the Trivisonnos were on a plane watching the Masters golf tournament on their cellphones when the coverage was interrupted by the footage of Notre Dame on fire. It gutted them. Later, Nick Trivisonno said, they received a solicitation in the mail that asked them to donate to the rebuilding effort.

After their contribution, they were invited, with other U.S. donors, to dine at the French ambassador’s residence in Washington. Nick Trivisonno eventually became a board member of the Friends of Notre-Dame de Paris group.

At breakfast Saturday, they said they were waiting for further instructions for attending the evening’s reopening ceremony, to which they had also been invited. The French organizers seemed to be doing some last-minute improvising around matters of protocol and timing, due to President-elect Donald Trump’s late announcement that he planned to attend, and a weather forecast that was calling for rain.

As a young man, Nick Trivisonno had studied for a career in the priesthood before moving into the secular world of business. He said that with Trump’s planned attendance, the event Saturday seemed to have taken on more of a political than a spiritual tone.

He said he was more excited about the inaugural Mass on Sunday morning. “The dignitaries are going to be gone,” he said. “Trump is going to be gone. We’re going to get to be parishioners.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.