Christine Samson Wil Dasovich

Early life and career

Samson Duval was born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1966. After completing her training in marine biology, Samson spent a stint in the Marine Biological Association before joining the Peace Corps in 1992, where she and her husband, Thomas David Wassmer, spent two years living in various communities across Canada. In 1993, Samson was transferred to Guadalcanal, on South Pacific during the infamous raid on Japanese bases and facilities on Guadalcanal, where the Japanese were losing badly to the Marine forces. These experiences profoundly shaped her, and shaped her views of the U.S. Marine Corps, in particular in the months preceding the April 1991 Gulf of Tonkin Incident, when war in the Pacific became an opportunity for American ground troops to run amok and to use lethal force, leaving one of their own on a Pacific island. Samson would go on to serve as a Marine Corps Operational Detachment Commander at Headquarters Marine Corps, in various locations in the South Pacific, and later at Amphibious Warfare School in Quantico, and in Washington, D.C. Samson was later posted to Japan, where she was responsible for maintaining the communications links between Japan and the rest of the world, in addition to a small team operating throughout the Solomon Sea and the East China Sea, preparing for resupply operations and air strikes and intelligence gathering, by Marines. It all seemed to be in her wheelhouse, though she also grew to appreciate the beauty of other cultures, particularly Vietnam. Although it is difficult to fully evaluate what she achieved for the Marine Corps, her actions at the peak of combat, still, 10 years ago, rank among the greatest of her career.

Colonnades and retirement

After her time in the Marine Corps, Samson returned to Canada. She began making her way around the United States, and then in 2002 moved to Huntington Beach, Los Angeles, where she took on a new career as a massage therapist. She also worked for numerous companies and for former members of Congress, which helped to expand her business interests outside the massage industry. In 2006 she won the Institute for Clinical Massage's Martha Washington Living Legend Award. In 2007 she married David Wassmer, a former Marine. They have three children, including an adopted child, and live in Huntington Beach, with their dog and her pet guppie.