Most of the information in this chapter is derived from the private collection of the Lord-Pagès family, kept by Melvin’s son, Montague John Lord. It consists of a large volume of letters and diaries that his mother, Carmen, kept with great esteem. Other sources include letters sent by Armstrong Cork to Melvin about his contracts and various publications describing Melvin’s life in the Costa Brava.

This chapter begins with a brief biography of Melvin’s childhood. It describes family and key events that shaped his character and later life. It then recounts his meeting with his adoptive father and his subsequent social life and academic achievements. In Palamós, Melvin had an extensive social circle of friends, colleagues, and family on his wife’s side, and these are covered extensively in this chapter because they played a critical role in his covert activities during the Second World War.

More importantly, we trace his actions within the Office of Strategic Services in Costa Brava for this study. The recently published book by Xavier Pla, Un cor furtiu: vida de Josep Pla (2024), provides valuable insights into those times, since it has extensive references to the Office of Strategic Services operation and Melvin’s involvement, often in the context of the writer Josep Pla’s participation in those activities.

The chapter concludes with a summary of Melvin’s life after the Second World War, once the OSS was dissolved. He started his own business in the early yearsand later worked for a renowned ceramic and silver designer. Afterward, he joined the ranks of the newly created US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and carried out assignments in several countries. Virtually all the documents consulted have been digitized for the virtual museum of the Lord-Pagès family, developed and managed by Montague John Lord, with help from the author of this study.

3.1. Background of a spy: childhood and youth

Melvin Smith Lord was born on October 18, 1912, in Bethpage, Missouri (USA). He was the fifth child of Margaret and Harry Travis. His original name was Melvin Frank Travis, and it was not until he was eighteen that he changed this surname to Lord, which he took from his adoptive father. Melvin’s biological father was strict and they appeared not to get along. In contrast, Melvin developed a deep and affectionate bond with his mother, with whom he maintained contact for throughout his life.¹

Between the ages of two and fourteen, Mel lived with his family in a rural settlement in Greeley, Colorado. In May 1926, the Travis family sold their farm and moved to Oregon, crossing the Rocky Mountains through a treacherous journey. Melvin attended high school in Salem thanks to his mother’s financial support and Mevin’s work as a gardener and lumberjack.

During the academic year, he did gardening work at the home of Clarence Morton Bishop, owner of the famous Pendleton wool clothing, and in the summers, he worked at a sawmill in the Oregon forests. In his spare time, he participated in a theater group, which met at the home of Estelle Thayer, whose father, Ashael Bush, was a prominent businessperson and banker. The Thayers treated Melvin as part of their family, and Mrs. Thayers taught him to eat correctly, do housekeeping, and tend to the garden.²

It is unknown how Melvin Travis met his adoptive father, Montague Lord.³ There are two versions: in the first, Melvin told his son, Montague Lord, that his employer, C.M. Bishop, introduced them after a play in which Mel was one of the actors. In the second version, Carmen Pagés Vilar, Melvin’s wife, wrote that Montague went to Estelle Thayer’s house to visit her sister, Sally Bush, and met Melvin there. Shortly thereafter, Montague Lord adopted Melvin at the urging of his sister, Elisabeth Lord. She told Montague that he was already supporting many Filipino children and that he should also help a young American boy, perhaps even more than the others. Indeed, when he arrived the Philippines with Melvin, Montague introduced him as his son. Melvin’s biological mother, Margaret, permitted him to change his last name from Travis to Lord after Montague visited her. Melvin was eighteen years old.

Montague Lord Sr. provided Mel with financial and social stability that allowed him to advance and grow both in his educational and personal life. Montague was part of a prominent family in the United States. He was the son of William Paine Lord, who had been governor of Oregon, and Juliette Montague, who had founded the first gardening club in the state. Montague’s sister Elisabeth founded one of the first female landscape architects firms in the American Northwest with her friend and colleague Edith Schryver.

In the Philippines, Montague had an estate in Marikina. There, he enjoyed a privileged social position. He was a great friend of Winifred Howard Babbitt, head of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association (HSPA). Later, Montague was interned with Winifred in the concentration camp during the Japanese occupation, along with his other friend, Manuel L. Quezon, who later became president of the Philippines (Alcántara, 1988). Mel was first introduced to Manuel Quezon at the White House Hotel in San Francisco while they were waiting for their ship to sail to the Philippines.

Montague Lord Sr.’s character was similar to that of Melvin’s biological father, Harry. He was stern and lacked a sense of humor. One of Montague’s first actions with Mel was to take him to Hong Kong so he could try opium in one of the city’s many dens. After Mel became violently sick, Montague told him that it was a lesson for him always to stay away from narcotics.

Melvin studied at La Salle University in the Philippines and later at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he graduated with a degree in chemical engineering. At Leigh University, he became a member of the Greco-American Wrestling Team. Leigh was well known for its engineering department. Its graduates helped build the Panama Canal, the first escalator, and the Golden Gate Bridge in California. During his university years, Melvin also joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) and conducted military maneuvers in Washington, DC

3.2. Personal connections

Melvin Smith Lord and Carmen Pagès Vilar met in October 1940, after Melvin had lived in Palamós for about a year. Only four months afterward, they were married on March 6, 1941, in the Basilica of Santa Maria de Montserrat.⁴ Carmen was eight years younger than Melvin. She was born in Palamós in 1920 and married Melvin when she was nineteen. Carmen’s immediate family comprised her parents and a younger brother, Pelayo. Her father, Pelayo Pagès Belleville, and her mother, Maria Vilar Moner, were natives of Palamós, Girona, and both came from long lines of pharmacists.

Carmen’s younger brother, Pelayo Pagès Vilar, was born in 1924 and studied pharmacy like his father. When he reached adulthood, Pelayo married Mercedes Ribera Casamada, a pharmacist whose uncle, Fèlix Ribera i Llorens, would be mayor of Palamós between 1939 and 1951. On the same day that the ship Canarias bombed Palamós, the Republican militias murdered Mercedes’ father and other heads of well-off families, families with which the Pagès would also become related later on. They buried the murdered victims in the forest of Treumal, where Carmen and Melvin would live a few years later (Ribera, 2021).

Carmen’s paternal grandfather was Augusto Pagès de Ortiz, who received the first concession to operate a steam tram that ran from Sant Feliu de Guíxols to Flaçà and linked up with the Barcelona-France railway line heading towards the French border. Augusto’s father, Narciso Pagès Prats, was a renowned lawyer and mayor of Palamós, president of the Girona provincial council, and member of the Cortes for the Torroella de Montgrí constituency within the conservative party (Olaizola, 2024). Carmen’s maternal grandfather, Juan Vilar Danés, owned the Vilar pharmacies in Palamós and Barcelona, the latter of which became the Pagès pharmacy after being inherited by Pelayo.

Mercedes Ribera’s grandfather married the Lord-Pagès couple in Montserrat. He had entered the priesthood after his wife died and, despite being a priest, was a Republican. This political association led to his arrest, and he was taken to the bishopric of the Balearic Islands, where he was soon released because of the bishop’s political influence. The Pagès family was associated with other wealthy clans in Palamós and other nearby towns over several generations. These associations were particularly strong with the Matas, Gubert, Ribera, and Costart families, all of which had large businesses and political influence in Palamós.

The Pagès family was related to Gaspar Matas, who introduced football in Spain. María Pagès Belleville, sister of Pelayo Pagès Belleville, had married Julio Matas Danés, brother of Gaspar. Gaspar Matas founded the football team Palamós C.F. in 1898 and has been linked to espionage activities with the Francoist army.

Carmen attended secondary school at the Instituto Nacional Balmes and later enrolled at the University of Barcelona, although she never graduated. The family lived in Palamós, but Carmen spent her summers in Banyoles, where she also lived during the Spanish Civil War. Her parents owned a flat on Calle Consejo de Ciento, in the heart of Barcelona’s Eixample district. After marrying Melvin, they planned to travel to Manila in 1941. However, Montague Lord wrote to Pelayo Pagés, Carmen’s father, and asked him to dissuade the couple from traveling to the Philippines and consider living in the United States instead.⁵ The Japanese were about to invade that territory.⁶ Melvin and Carmen did well to follow his advice, as Mr. Lord became interned in a Japanese concentration camp during the occupation of the country and stayed there until the Philippine campaign of 1945, when the Americans, British, Australians, and Mexicans razed Manila to the ground to expel the Japanese imperial forces. Melvin maintained an excellent relationship with his in-laws and Carmen with her husband’s family.⁷

Politically, all the letters that Carmen received and sent during the war years, and those that would follow, revealed ideologies similar to those of the political right. She criticized the Republican army and praised the National Movement and the Catholic Church. These views may have been expressed in her letters because all correspondence was subject to Franco’s censorship; it was, therefore, necessary to praise the government and the Church. However, the Pagès family supported the regime since they were conservative well before the Spanish Civil War.⁸ It is also known that they were a right-wing family from one note in Carmen’s diary. She describes how, on Saturday, September 12, 1936, the anti-fascist militias of Palamós entered their houses to remove all the religious images and everything related to the Church, including a statue of the Virgin of Sorrows that was over two hundred years old and was in her grandparents’ room. At just sixteen years old, she described the event this way:

“I notice how pious I was before and how pious I am now… Sometimes I wonder if I am even a heretic. The rooms seem empty and seem larger than they were, increasing the lonely appearance that they have without the emblem of Christianity. Nevertheless, this cannot last long. There must be a reaction in the hearts of men, a group protesting to the world, a rebellion against those who claim to root the truth of faith in our hearts.”

Mel and Carmen’s marriage was viewed by friends and family as a union of two great people, judging by their letters and diaries. Both crossed cultural or racial barriers and had friends all over the world. Politically, Melvin was a Republican. In contrast, Carmen later became more liberal, attending, for example, Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream‘ speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, on August 28, 1963.

Montague John Lord portrays Carmen as a person much more given to social events than family activities. She loved being surrounded by friends and was always pleased to be the hostess of a gathering. Melvin was more reserved, although equally able to participate in social events. He had great affection for his friends but was much less gregarious than Carmen.

3.3. Destination Palamós: a spy in Armstrong Cork Company

In 1939, Melvin Lord arrived in Palamós, Spain, to work in the branch of Armstrong Cork Company named Manufacturas del Corcho Armstrong S.A.; the OSS had yet to be established. Before traveling to Spain, Melvin had wanted to return to the Philippines after finishing his university studies. However, his father, Montague, is convinced it could be dangerous because of an imminent war with Japan, and he advises Mel to stay away. As a result, Mel got a job as an apprentice in the engineering department at Armstrong Cork in Pennsylvania, where the company’s headquarters were located. He was tasked with going to the Spanish towns of Palamós and Palafrugell to rebuild the industry after the damage caused by the Spanish Civil War. Melvin became a plant engineer responsible for re-establishing the factory’s entire production chain, from rebuilding the overall energy supply system to ensuring the efficient operation of cork production.

3.3.1. Operaciones

According to Montague John Lord, Melvin was part of the OSS counterintelligence apparatus X-2 in L’Escala. Mel claimed he was building a sailboat called “Ojalá”, in collaboration with David Sanderson, as a reason for his frequent trips to L’Escala. There, he had access to a hidden two-way radio from which they could transmit information to OSS headquarters.

As mentioned earlier, one of the key interventions of the Office of Strategic Services in the Iberian Peninsula was Operation TORCH, which involved the first American landing in North Africa. Melvin was one of the twelve officers flown to the African coasts to establish networks and gather information to guide the Allied landings. According to Montague Lord, Melvin told his brother Robert he had parachuted into France, Germany, and Africa while mapping their terraine.⁹ In France, Melvin was probably part of the Jedburghs who collaborated in the Normandy landings and joined the French resistance, supported by the OSS Special Operations (SO) Division and British Special Operations Executive (SOE37).

Melvin’s mission in the Costa Brava was to spy on the German head of the two Armstrong Cork branches, Kurt Walters, and, in so doing, they became friends, even sailing together often.¹⁰ The main task of Melvin and his companions, however, was to establish a route to allow the escape of Jews from the areas occupied by the German army. Montague confirmed that Josep Pla’s Guide to the Costa Brava was reissued to disseminate information to sailors about the coastal coves in the upper and lower Empordà.¹¹ This is also confirmed by Xavier Pla (2024), who describes the participation of the brothers Josep and Pere Pla in clandestine operations. On those same pages, there is also mention of his close contact with men like Josep Quintà, who were commissioned to photograph the Costa Brava coves to add the images’ visual details to the reissue of Josep Pla’s book Guide to the Costa Brava.

Melvin used those sea escape channels and also traveled to the Pyrenees to enter France through the mountain paths established by the passeurs and the réseaux of the French Resistance to gather information. According to his son Montague, Melvin never had to kill a German, but once, returning from France with his guide, companion, smuggler, and neighbor of Palamós Miguel Ureña, they had to hide from a couple of Nazis who were camped overnight along their path.

Melvin and his colleagues would take refugees who escaped from occupied France to the American embassy in Barcelona. They were assisted by Mr. Boix, who had a jewelry shop on the Rambla de Cataluña in Barcelona and whose daughter Tina was a close friend of Carmen. Montague described a meeting that Melvin and others had with the ruling dictator, Francisco Franco, about their clandestine activities. That meeting took place at the behest of Miguel Mateu, owner of the Peralada Castle. Mr. Boix and Carmen’s family were friends of Miguel Mateu, who had helped Franco finance his armaments during the Spanish Civil War. Miguel Mateu organized a secret meeting between Melvin, Mr. Boix, and the Spanish dictator. The orders were clear: they could continue their activities, but if they were discovered, he would pretend that he knew nothing about those activities.

Xavier Pla (2024) confirms what Montague John Lord says: the main task of the clandestine network in which Pere Pla, Josep Pla, and Melvin Lord were involved would be to facilitate the escape of people by sea. Their duties included sending political and military reports through a correspondence service located along the Pyrenees border. Bands of smugglers were tasked with going back and forth across the Pyrenees to deliver those reports.

Melvin’s name appears for the first time in the Pla brothers’ lives in a letter dated 18 September 1943. In that letter, Pedro tells Josep that Melvin provided him with a renewal of his border pass the night before, suggesting that one of Melvin’s tasks was to provide passports to members of his covert network. Melvin Lord had many opportunities working at Armstrong Cork to pass along documents of various kinds to his colleagues.¹²

Throughout Catalonia, there were strategic places to conduct small actions within each mission. In La Jonquera, for example, there was someone to whom the license plate numbers of the German cars that met to eat at the Ca la Neus restaurant in L’Escala were sent. In Palamós, the Mas Juny in Castell, owned by Albert Puig Palau and his brothers and previously owned by Josep Maria Sert, served as a meeting place for the Allied side (Pla, 2024).

Carmen Pagès’ letters to some of her friends and family reveal that Melvin lived through the war’s end in Paris, where he was possibly fulfilling some assignment. Marilee Lord, daughter of Melvin and Carmen, was born a few months earlier, on July 26, 1944.

3.3.2 Colleagues and Relationships

Melvin Lord had a host of collaborators and connections that indiscriminately ranged from the highest spheres of society to the lowest social classes. Likewise, their meeting places ranged from La Jonquera to Barcelona, passing through the entire Costa Brava and many of the towns in the interior regions of Catalonia.

Montague says his father was a close friend of Pere Pla i Casadevall, brother of the writer Josep Pla. Both worked together in the multinational Armstrong Cork in Palafrugell, where the Pla brothers were from. The factory was run by Joan Miquel Avelli, who had been elected mayor of Palafrugell in 1930 and was the father-in-law of Pere Pla and Enrique Vincke. Joan Miquel Avellí was the editor of the weekly Baix Empordà, linked to La vie de Catalunya, with a strong Catalan separatist leanings, and had financially supported Josep Pla so that he could publish his book Relaciones in 1925.

In the Pla circle of friends, there was also Frank Keerl, of German nationality, who had married Maria Gracia Pla in 1930. Keerl had fled his native country at the beginning of the First World War, thereby avoiding being conscripted into military service in Germany. He worked in the sales department at Manufacturas del Corcho Armstrong from 1934. However, during the Civil War, he took refuge in Germany and settled permanently in Barcelona (Pla, 2024).¹³

Pedro Pla held several senior managerial positions in the company, even during the Spanish Civil War. He traveled to Portugal occasionally, where, according to information Montague Lord gathered from interviews with his relatives, he met Melvin and David Sanderson. The Pla brothers were closely associated in their daily life: Pedro (‘Pere’ in Catalan) made his brother an accountant, errand boy, chauffeur, legal representative, literary agent; while Pedro edited Josep’s first manuscripts since he had a much more practical, scientific, and logical mind than Josep, who was more bohemian (Pla, 2024). Pedro Pla, like Melvin, had a degree in the chemical sciences and a technically oriented mindset (Lord, 2024).

Between 1942 and 1947, Josep and Pedro Pla were involved in “pro-American” activities with people in Palamós, Figueres, Barcelona, Madrid, Gibraltar, Portugal, and England, all with links to Armstrong Cork. Josep Pla lived for a long time in Madrid and had friends in the highest spheres of society, which allowed him to be informed before policy changes were publicly announced (Pla, 2024). It helped prepare for operations in Spain, such as that of Operation TORCH, to gain allies on both sides of the conflict. The Palamós doctor Francesc Dalmau published an article describing the covert network of which the Pla brothers were part included Manuel Brunet and Albert Puig Palau.

Pla was a close friend, as was Melvin Lord, of the novelist and well-known North American contributor to the New York Times Robert C. Ruark, who lived on the beach of Es Monestrí in Palamós (Pla, 2024). On his missions, Melvin traveled across the Pyrenees with Miguel Ureña, a gardener at TreuMal, where Carmen and Melvin lived, to help refugees cross the frontier and send them onward into exile as quickly as possible.

It is well known that Carmen Pagès Vilar was not an OSS agent, but she collaborated by providing support to her husband. She was aware of the clandestine activities conducted by Melvin, David, and Miguel and provided cover for Melvin when her acquaintances asked about him at gatherings.

Melvin was in permanent contact with Franc Musselman Schoonmaker and Clair Nathaniel Nell. Franc Schoonmaker was in charge of a clandestine network and was condemned after the war for participating in the 2677th OSS regiment in Spain, southern France, and Sicily.¹⁴ Clair Nell was the director of Armstrong Cork in Seville. From Palafrugell, it is also known that there was contact with the Front Nacional de Catalunya and, probably, with Nicolás Woedyodsky Arapoff, who lived in Cap Roig with his wife. Several notable individuals lived in Palamós. The editorial staff of the magazine Destino, of which Josep Pla was a member, used to meet at the Trias Hotel (Pla, 2024). Some of these individuals appear in one of the private photographs of the Lord-Pagès family when they gathered at the Hotel Roca Fosca in Palamós. The journalist Víctor Lloret helped Montague to identify them. They included Rafael María, “Mascort”, Norman Sloot, Jaime Saguer, and Lluís Bofill.

The historian Josep Clara published a document from the Spanish police in which the Civil Guard delegation in Palafrugell had been alerted that there were suspicions that clandestine meetings were occurring at the home of “a certain Pedro Pla” on Caridad Street. The list of attendees included José María Pla Casadevall, José Sagrera Perxés, Luis Matas Teixidor, Isidro Cervera París, Ramiro Medir Jofra, Luis Bonal Salaberty Paulino Juanola Maruny. The document went on to state that, “It is suspected that all of them are linked to an individual employed at the French Consulate, with the surname Monneret, and to a Filipino foreigner, a resident of Barcelona” (Pla, 2024).
The commander of the Civil Guard responded to the complaint by defending those mentioned and claiming that they were all residents of Palafrugell, politically right-wing. It was also shown that it was impossible to prove that their conversations at Pere Pla’s house were dangerous. Their past qualities, work positions, and political ideas linked to right-wing parties were described in detail in the document. Where details were not available, the document instead referred to the help those individuals had provided the “Great National Movement” during the Spanish Civil War.

Another suspect reported in the document was Josep Quintà Alfaya, who, before the Second World War, had been involved in smuggling. He had a car and a boat and, according to Cristina Badosa, Josep Pla’s biographer, he was the one in charge of going along the coast from Roses to Portbou to take photographs that would be included in the new edition of the Guide to the Costa Brava in 1944. It could all be related to mapping out points along the Gulf of Rosas and other areas along the Costa Brava to support landings of refugees.

Josep Quintà Alfaya regularly contacted Josep Pla’s editor, Josep Vergés, especially when finishing the Guide to the Costa Brava. In his forward to the book, Josep Pla wrote: “Thank you very much for the collaboration that you, my friend Quintà – and Mrs. Quintà – have given to this poor book, which I still do not know precisely how it will end, despite having widespread distribution. (Figueres, April 1946)”. This could have been a key message, alluding to the uncertainty about how the conflict would end. It was suspected that a certain Monneret, a friend of Quintà, could be a double agent, on the one hand, for the Deuxième Bureau (Secret Services of Free France); on the other, for the old Spanish SIPM (Servicio de información y policía militar) (Pla, 2024).

After the civil guard alerted them of the clandestine meetings at Pedro Pla’s house, David Sanderson and Melvin met again. However, this time, they took their wives, Carmen Lord, and Betty Sanderson make it appear to be a social event. They also mentioned events in Llofriu and Palamós, one of which was on the feast of Sant Esteve in 1944, as described by Pla (2024):

“We remember that Melvin Lord, Forrester, Pedro Pla, and Manuel Brunet, already known in this sector, were seen that day in Figueras visiting José Quintá, accompanying the latter all the time they stayed there. Pedro Pla is a close friend of Quintá, and without a doubt, it was because of him I met Lord and Forrester, so it is reasonable to suspect that the arrangements made by Quintá are at the behest of Melvin” (Pla 2024, 958).

Other important figures in the OSS were (a) Joseph Hayden, who had been vice-governor of the Philippines during the first years of Roosevelt’s administration;¹⁵ (b) David Gray, the representative of the Spanish consulate in Casablanca; (c) Frank Leroy, a friend of Herman Ginsburg and Joan Miró; (d) Jordi Taronja, an unidentified character with a key number of the person who had properties in the Pyrenees to facilitate the escape of those fleeing France; (e) Bernard Gilda, director of the orchestra at the Ritz hotel in Barcelona and a Jew of Russian origin who had fled occupied France and served as a liaison with the consulates so Jews could travel to Portugal, Casablanca, and Gibraltar (Pla, 2024).

3.3.3. The magic chain of Carmen Pagès Vilar

Carmen was an amiable woman, given to social events and interpersonal relationships. Her friends described her as a beautiful, sweet, endearing, kind woman who was always good-humored. Josep Pla said to María Vilar, Carmen’s mother, that he was grateful to have met a woman “as unforgettable and as generous and as much of an artist as Carmen.”¹⁶ Carmen devoted herself to painting in her free time and cultivated friendships worldwide. Among her correspondence, there are letters addressed to illustrious people such as José Ventosa Palanca, a lawyer from Barcelona who would be president of the Excursionist Center of Catalonia in 1939;¹⁷ Princess Aymone de Faucigny-Lucinge, wife of Count François Sauvage de Brantes;¹⁸ and the writer Regine Hubert Robert; Louise Leullier.

When she was older, Carmen wanted to write a cookbook that would include recipes that her friends from around the world had taught her, accompanied by anecdotes of enjoyable times they had together when they had met. Thanks to these recipes and the first drafts of her book, the names of those friends are readily available. This manuscript was titled “The Magic Chain” because, in Carmen’s words, every gastronomic meeting with loved ones “like the Sardana, the dance of Catalonia, links us and unites us.”¹⁹

For this reason, as a brief tribute to Carmen’s memories, which have served so much to shape the text of this investigation, some names that she considered closest are cited in this section. Further investigation may reveal whether they were part of Melvin’s network in the OSS or, later, the CIA.

In a letter from Carmen Pagès to her parents, undated but probably from 1940, she describes a fantastic day she spent in S’Agaró with Mel, a man named ‘Fritz’ and a lady named ‘Limer Kurb’. There is evidence of two “Fritzes” who were involved in the OSS network in the Second World War: the first, who lived in S’Agaró throughout the Civil War, was a lieutenant of the XI International Brigade and was imprisoned in different places for his affiliation with the Communist Party of Spain;²⁰ the second, Fritz Duquense, the leader of the Nazi spies who had set the fires in Armstrong Cork factories in America and whose actions had served as the first excuse to investigate the causes of possible German sabotage (Taylor, 2018).

Other contacts and names mentioned were Salvador Bordas, the painter Salvador Dalí, the fisherman Joaquín Llavero, a certain Nicolasa, Miguel Ureña, Dimmicks, Samia and Ahmed from Egypt, Volourmis from Greece, Lisa, Meda, Joan King, and Jesús Vilallonga, many of whom lived in Mediterranean countries where the cork industry had developed thanks to Armstrong Cork and where the OSS undertook operations during the Second World War. In 1944, Carmen also received letters from French acquaintances exiled in America. Who knows if there could have been some refugees Melvin helped rescue?

Carmen he and Melvin often met with David Sanderson, “the former owner of Armstrong Cork,” and Josep and Pedro Pla.²¹ These meetings never lacked topics to discuss, and curiously, Carmen shows that very often a third of the conversation was about football, “commented on brilliantly,” about the book “La Costa Brava” by Josep Pla. There, the names of Carmen and Melvin appeared, and there was mention of exchanges of information about the construction of some boats. Xavier Pla says that, in the correspondence between José Quintà and Josep Pla, euphemisms were frequently used to hide their clandestine actions (Pla, 2024). It is likely that all their communications, including those that involved conversations with Melvin, were like this.

Carmen writes that Melvin and Pedro met every Sunday to watch football “with one or two whiskeys served by Lola, Josep Pla’s cook, while I went to play la podrida in Palamós.”^{22 23} Sometimes, they went to Figueres, and Maria Rosa Pla and José Verges had dinner with them. José Mercader, who had cooked at the Trull in Cadaqués, and Jaume Subirós also joined their meetings. Mercader had been at the Hotel La Rocafosca, on La Fosca beach in Palamós as a kitchen boy at the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939, just when Melvin arrived. Josep Vergès, editor of “Destino”, who was in close contact with Pla through his writings, also met with them. As for locations, Carmen mentions, among others, the Casa Sagrera in Calella, where they occasionally spent half a day or a while in 1944. She considered her most unforgettable excursions to be with José and Pedro Pla Casadevall.

It is too early to say whether all these people were involved in Mel’s clandestine network. Speculation remains, and further research is needed.

3.4. Life after the 1940s

On July 26, 1944, Mary Elisabeth Lord (“Marilee”) was born to Carmen and Mel, and on May 4, 1946, their son, Montague John Lord, was born. American President Harry Truman had dismantled the OSS just a few months earlier. Carmen Pagès gave birth to both children in Barcelona, and they soon moved to the United States; Montague Lord Sr. had given his son money to start a business, producing silver decorative pieces designed by Royal Arden Hickman (“Hick”). Hick and his wife Ruth were great friends of the Lord family. Once settled in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, Carmen and Melvin began their new life. However, when the silverware company went bankrupt, the family moved to Tampa, Florida, where Melvin worked at Royal Hickman’s pottery company. Carmen’s parents, Pelayo and Maria, visited them there and traveled aboard the Magallanes in Christmas 1949 (Lord, 2024).

In the 1950s, the family’s life changed again. Although Truman had dismantled the OSS organization, the government reassigned its personnel, operations, procedures, and contacts to the newly crated Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This time, without his wife’s knowledge, Melvin Lord had been recruited by the CIA to carry out industrial espionage missions worldwide. After training in Washington, DC, Melvin’s first assignment was in Madrid. From there, the family often traveled to Palamós and Barcelona. That same year, 1953, David Sanderson and his family moved to Casablanca.

Between 1955 and 1957, Melvin Lord and his family returned to Costa Brava. The reason for their return would be the installation of Radio Liberty on Pals Beach, within the framework of the American Mission to the bases in the Spanish State (Pla, 2024). Melvin and Kurt Walters, who had been tasked with keeping a close eye on him during the Second World War, had become very good friends after the conflict ended, and Montague Lord remembers regular meetings with the former Armstrong Cork boss, who often spearfished at the Palamós lighthouse. David and Betty Sanderson maintained close contact with the Lord family and Carmen’s parents, and their children forged a friendship with each other.

After his assignment in Madrid, Mel was assigned to Mexico and later to Venezuela.²⁴ On January 23, 1958, the CIA-backed coup d’état in Venezuela against Marcos Pérez Jiménez’s government occurred. Democracy was “restored” in the country, and the former leader took refuge in Spain, where Franco gave him asylum. Given the timing of the Lord family’s stay in Venezuela, it is possible that Melvin was involved in that operation.

The family’s good economic and social position continued to provide opportunities for their descendants. Thus, Melvin’s children and grandchildren have also been able to develop their professional careers; Marilee studied in Switzerland, where she was taught to “be a lady” with good manners, and Montague worked with various international development organizations, working on assignments in over one hundred countries.