It's a small chance, but a French lawyer is looking around the world for anyone who might have a legitimate claim on the considerable estate of a woman named Monique Baylin-Kaye, who died last year in Monaco at the age of 78.
The lawyer is looking in Russia, in Western Europe, in China ... and in the Red River Valley.
Why here?
This will take a minute, but here's a hint: The answer is in UND's Chester Fritz Library.
Vera Kachalina was born in Moscow in 1906 to a well-to-do land-owning couple who lost everything, including their lives, in the violence following the Russian Revolution of 1917.
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Vera, an aspiring ballerina who had studied at the Bolshoi, escaped to Mongolia, where she met and married fellow Russian émigré Alexander Baylin.
They had a child, Monique, and lived for 22 years in China, but the marriage ended after World War II. Vera and Monique made their way to Rome, where in 1953 Vera met a man who also had spent many years in the Far East. He was born in Buxton, N.D., and feasted on Horatio Alger novels as a youth in Fargo. As a man, he made a fortune in international finance and trading in precious metals.
His name was Chester Fritz, and in time he would give millions to his college alma mater, UND, for the library and auditorium that bear his name.
'A warm hand'
In 1954, Fritz and Vera Kachalina Baylin were married in Switzerland. According to a 1982 biography co-written (with Fritz) by former UND archivist Dan Rylance, the couple lived in Italy, Switzerland and a grand chalet in Monte Carlo, Monaco, while Fritz continued to make money by investing in gold and other commodities around the world.
In 1961, in only his second visit back to UND in the 50 years since he had been a student, Fritz spoke at the dedication of the library he had financed with a gift of $1 million. (He would give another $1 million for the auditorium and later finance an addition to the library and major scholarship endowments.)
"It is an interesting experience to come back to the home pasture, and especially after long absences," he said. But the occasion gave him "a peculiar kind of pleasure, the kind of pleasure that comes from knowing that a long-term debt is finally about to be paid off."
Giving UND a library, he said, was "partial repayment to the state of North Dakota for the training I received in its public school system."
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And, using a line that other potential donors have been hearing from university bush-beaters for decades, he said it was especially gratifying to give "with a warm hand."
No small change
Chester Fritz died on July 28, 1983. He is buried in Memorial Park Cemetery in Grand Forks.
Vera Fritz died in 2005 in Monte Carlo. She is buried next to Chester.
They had no children together, and Chester Fritz had no children by a previous marriage.
There was only Monique, who was married but apparently outlived her husband and had no children.
"Fritz did not like her and was determined that she would not get all his money after he and Vera died," Rylance said in an email from Wisconsin, where he lives in retirement. "She must have gotten some because 2.5 million euros is no small change."
At today's exchange rate, it's just more than $3.5 million.
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Rylance was contacted earlier this month by Stefan Pantamacce, a French lawyer who specializes in estates and probate research. Rylance spent many hours in Europe with Chester Fritz as they worked on the biography, but he said he never met Monique and didn't know anything about her later life.
Monique's passing, and questions about what was to happen with her estate, brought back some memories. "It was an interesting footnote to (the stories of) Chester and Vera," he said.
Fritz was the first and only surviving child of Charles and Anne Fritz, according to the biography.
"It seems we will have to focus on the Russian side of this family," Pantamacce wrote in an email to Rylance. If no relatives can be located, her estate will go to the government of Monaco.
