Louise Savoy dons a headset and climbs into a tall chair at HooSkow Radio WXNZ in Skowhegan.

“Bonjour, mes amis,” she says, speaking clearly and precisely into the microphone.

Savory, 86, introduces herself as Memere Bella, host of her show “Just Beyond the Moon.”

For more than a year, she’s been sharing her favorite French music on the community radio station’s “The French Hour,” which airs from  2-3 p.m. —  give or take a few minutes — each Thursday and Sunday. The show is on 90.7 FM and streamed at wxnz-splatterbox link.

At her side, manning the studio’s motherboard, is Earl Boyd, who produces and hosts the “The French Hour,” as well as several other shows on the all-volunteer, commercial radio station located inside the Maine Grains building in downtown Skowhegan. He and Savoy play French songs such as “La Vie en Rose” by the legendary Edith Piaf. Savoy is partial to songs from Canada, including country western.

“My favorite is my mother’s favorite, ‘Quand le Soleil Dit Bonjour aux Montagnes’ — ‘When the sun says hello to the mountains,’ she says. It’s about a man sitting on the mountain thinking about his lost loved one, and he could hear the wind almost singing.”

Savoy is a slight woman with intelligent eyes and a sweet and gentle demeanor that belies her strength. On Tuesday, when I visited the station, she was wearing a soft sweater and mauve colored knit cap. She explains it is because she lost her hair from lung cancer treatments she is undergoing. It is her second bout with lung cancer — and she survived colon cancer before that.

“When I had colon cancer, I got sepsis,” she said. “I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t even move my hand. That was in 2017. They called all my kids and told them to come here, in a blizzard, because I wouldn’t survive the night. But I did, and I was in rehab for 3o days.”

Despite having overcome multiple challenges in her life, Savoy is cheerful and inquisitive. What brought her to the radio station to become a deejay is a long and fascinating tale, one that can’t be told in a few hundred words, but here’s a brief synopsis.

She was raised in Waltham, Massachusetts, the eighth of 10 children to parents who had moved to the United States from Quebec and spoke only French in the household, along with some broken English. Her mother, who worked in the mills, would sing to Louise and her siblings in French. Her father was a punch press operator, and she recalled he helped notify neighbors of air raids in World War II.

Louise, whose maiden name is Pelletier, attended a French Catholic school and spoke only French there. She had polio in her left hand and after being admitted to Children’s Hospital in Boston when she was 4, the famous actress, Mary Pickford, brought her roses, she said.

“When I was 7, I sat on Gene Autry’s lap. My mother was a big country fan and she loved Gene Autry, so she belonged to his club and the club invited me and my sister to his dressing room in Madison Square Garden. He was great.”

Savoy had aspired to be a dancer, but when she was a senior in high school, doctors performed surgery on her hand to try to make her thumb usable by removing a piece of bone from her leg and inserting it into her hand. It was an experimental surgery and failed, she said.

“My father and mother made my sister tie my shoes and I felt so awful about that, I learned to tie my shoes using my teeth and right hand,” she said.

She married a good man, a U.S. Marine who would later work as an oil burner service man, and they also had 10 children whom they raised in Massachusetts. In 1996 they moved to Maine where her in-laws were from.

Savoy and her husband lived in Canaan and when he died in 2006, she was devastated. She would sit at his grave every day for 17 years and play a cassette of “Just Beyond the Moon,” a song about a couple’s plan to reunite after death. It remains the theme song for her radio show.

About two years ago, a friend introduced her to Boyd — the radio show producer at HooSkow who had lost his wife — and they found they had much in common, particularly the love of music — and French music. They lived just around the corner from each other but had never met.

Their friendship grew into something more, and they became inseparable. Boyd, who has been at the radio station several years, convinced her to become a deejay. He also talked her into acting in a play at Sparrow’s Nest Theater in Industry where she appeared as the motorist in “Clue.” Savoy’s children, and 70 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, most of whom live in Massachusetts and other states, are the biggest fans of her radio show. “The French Hour” also features other deejays including students from Skowhegan Area High School’s French class.

Boyd himself is an interesting character. He’s a U.S. Marine and is a registered nurse who worked as a medic on several movie sets, including “Empire Falls,” based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Maine author Richard Russo. The HBO movie, filmed mostly in Waterville and Skowhegan, starred Paul Newman and his wife, Joanne Woodward, as well as Ed Harris and Helen Hunt. Boyd also acts at Lakewood Theatre in Madison.

As “LaVie en Rose” aired in the studio Tuesday, he and Savoy waltzed slowly in a small circle, mere feet from a gold-framed poster on the wall displaying the words “Love Is All You Need.”

Amy Calder has been a Morning Sentinel reporter 37 years. Her columns appear here Sundays. She is the author of the book, “Comfort is an Old Barn,” a collection of her curated columns, published in 2023 by Islandport Press. She may be reached at [email protected]. For previous Reporting Aside columns, go to centralmaine.com.