 Abe's shipping business closed with the beginning of World War I, when one of his tankers was torpedoed by the Germans and the survivors were shot in their lifeboats.Abe was commissioned by the U. S. Government to scrap the German fleet, and the girl's parents moved to Germany but left the children in the U.S.

Celeste, the elder, who was nine years older and married, looked after Margaret.Lefranc finished the last few months in school, and at the age of thirteen, traveled by freighter to join her parents in Berlin where she contracted rheumatic fever.