|
French Family Association Mara French, P.O. Box 1109, Sutter Creek, CA 95685-1109.
209-267-0649 Famous Frenches Dr. Ronald French Last updated by Mara French on 4/6/08. Send corrections or
additions to Mara French. |
|
Dr. Ronald French to reign as Rex, King of Mardi Graz in 2007 in New
Orleans, by John Pope, The Times-Picayune
To hasten his recovery from surgery last year to repair a
separated right shoulder, Dr. Ronald French added arm exercises to his
morning walk through Audubon Park. During that daily five-mile constitutional,
the husky ear, nose and throat specialist would repeatedly put his right arm
in front of his torso and move it in a graceful lateral arc, as if he were
executing a slow tennis backhand. Last fall, French abruptly dropped that regimen, not because
he was 100 percent healed but because, ever wise to the ways of
Carnival-crazed Uptown gossips, he realized a passerby might conclude that he
was rehearsing a particular monarch's trademark wave of the scepter. From October on, that inference would have been on the
mark. For October was the month when French, 68, was tapped to reign Tuesday
as Rex, king of Carnival, and he wanted to be sure that he did nothing to
divulge the secret, even if it might mean slowing his recovery. The prospect of riding as Rex made him flash an even
bigger-than-usual smile as he settled into a butterscotch-colored Barcelona
chair in his Uptown home a few days before Fat Tuesday. "What a thrill it is," he said. "It's sort
of like buying the winning lottery ticket. That's a fantasy that sweeps
through your mind from time to time, . . . but it's something you don't dwell
on because that interferes with the progress of one's life." Moments after he sat down, Josephine, a gray toy poodle
named for Napoleon Bonaparte's wife, bounded into French's lap, mussing his
master's Rex organization tie, a black four-in-hand tie with purple, green
and gold stripes. French views this year's festivities as part of the
continuing area-wide recovery from Hurricane Katrina's devastation. "I feel like this is a chance to tell the world that
we have survived, we have come back, we're ready to return to being the
greatest host city in the world. "It's time to thank the world for all the help
they've given us and are continuing to give us and to welcome everybody who
had been to the city in the past year and will be here, because we're going
to need them." A Family TraditionAlthough French over the years may have put aside thoughts
of holding Carnival's top spot, he comes to the throne steeped in the annual
tradition. His wife, Flora Fenner French, was Rex's
queen in 1959, and her father, Darwin Fenner, was
Rex in 1955 and the Rex organization's captain in 1960, when the krewe introduced Carnival doubloons, touching off a craze
that has continued for nearly a half-century and has morphed into a focus for
collectors. "It rained when he paraded in 1955," Flora
French said. "He had to come home and dry off the train, so one of my cousins
and I sat on the floor with towels and mopped up the train so it would be dry
for the Rex ball." Fenner, who was captain slightly
more than a decade, returned two familiar touches to the annual procession -
the Boeuf Gras float near the front and His
Majesty's Bandwagon at the rear. He also paid for float designer Blaine
Kern's trip to Europe to study festival parades. One result of that was supersize fixtures that have become fixtures in other
organizations' parades. Fenner "juiced it up,"
said a Rex organization member who spoke on condition of traditional Carnival
anonymity. A portrait of Darwin Fenner
occupies a commanding spot in the Frenches' house,
which is festooned with Mardi Gras paraphernalia. In the dining room, a long table is flanked by two highly polished antique side
tables: One has doubloons scattered over it; on the other, beads
encircle two flower-filled silver urns. The dining table is long because at supper each Monday it
must accommodate the couple, their five sons, their wives and eight
grandchildren. From one end to the other, the tabletop is strewn with crowns,
coronets, plumes and jesters' caps. Like other Rexes, French brings a strong rŽsumŽ of civic
involvement to his day of glory. He is director of the Coalition to Restore
Coastal Louisiana, and he has been president of the Bureau of Governmental
Research, director of the Delgado Community College Foundation and the
Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, a member of the executive committees of Touro Infirmary and East Jefferson General Hospital, a
member of the New Orleans Museum of Art's advisory board and the Louisiana
State Racing Commission, and chairman of the Chamber of Commerce's
medical-industry council. "He's intense, he's informed, and he's
involved," said Denis McDonald, a former Rex and longtime friend.
"He's a Renaissance man. Everything he gets involved in, he studies
thoroughly." French also is a former president of the Louisiana Nature
Center board. Bob Thomas, the executive director at the time, was impressed
by what French did during the debate over building an amphitheater. "At one point, someone said that was outside the
budget," Thomas said. "Ronnie cleared his throat and said, 'We've
got to do it. We'll just add that to the cost,' and we did it. It was named
after him. "For him to say, 'We're going to do it because it's
the right thing to do,' is so characteristic." French, a native of New Iberia, claims as an ancestor a
French surgeon who journeyed to America with a patient, Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, sieur de Bienville, when Bienville founded New Orleans in
1718. French grew up in Houston but returned to New Orleans to
attend Tulane University and never left. After three years of college, he was
admitted to medical school. During his undergraduate years, he met and fell in love
with Flora Fenner, who happened to be born on the
same August day in 1938. They married in 1960. The first Carnival ball French
attended was Rex's in 1959, when she was queen. "He had a blind date with my best friend," Flora
Fenner French said, laughing, "and she's
coming back for this one." During French's Charity Hospital residency, he saw plenty
of people struggling for breath, and he was determined to do something about
it. So he devised a key-size aluminum-and-steel cylinder that doctors use to
perform on-the-spot tracheotomies to open blocked windpipes. When no one expressed interest in his prototype, French
threw it into a desk drawer, where it languished for more than two decades
until his son saw it and made an appointment for his father with a patent
lawyer. In two years, the device, called LifeStat,
received a patent and Food and Drug Administration approval. Tens of
thousands have been sold - the Pentagon snapped up the backlog when the war
in Iraq broke out - and it was included in a 2005 exhibit of lifesaving
devices at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. LifeStat is still a steady
seller. The Frenches process the orders themselves
and tout it at medical meetings. Another device may be in the works, but French
is cagey enough not to want to say anything about it until he gets the
patent. Many PassionsFrench is humble about his success. "Every doctor is a tinkerer," he said. "He
has ideas that he'd like to do something with." Whatever French tries, he gets excited about, said Thomas,
who holds the Loyola chair in environmental communications at Loyola
University. When he and French were in Alaska several years ago,
French was plowing through a paperback version of "Alaska," James
Michener's doorstopper of a book about the 49th state. French urged Thomas to
read it, and Thomas said he would - as soon as he bought a copy. At that point, "he ripped the book in half and said,
'You'd better get started now,' " Thomas said. "I've seen him do
that many times. I've seen him walking around with a book that's been torn in
half, and I know what's happened." Other passions have included running, tennis and
windsurfing, all of which he has been forced to give up because of injuries. But his latest accident had nothing to do with athletics:
He broke his scepter-wielding arm when he fell into a pothole near his home. The cast came off Wednesday. Because his arm still may be
tender, John Weinmann, a former Rex, passed on this
bit of advice: Get a light scepter for the parade. "My recollection was that it was wood," said Weinmann, who reigned in 1996. "By the time I got to
Jackson Avenue, that little short stick started to weigh about a ton, and it
was simply because I was waving it. He ought to wave with his left hand, or
not use a scepter at all." Flora French wants him to smile and wave.
"It's fun and festive," she said, "but my mother used to say,
in a way, it's just a little bit of foolishness." John Pope can be reached at jpope@timespicayune.com or at
(504) 826-3317. AncestryDr. Ronald French, a physician from New Iberia, LA, b. Aug 1935, m. Flora Fenner in 1960. |
