People I Have Met
by J. Burton LeBlanc
May, 2007
If one thinks about it, one finds that he has met a lot of distinguished or well-known persons in the course of a career.
These were meetings that involved more than a handshake involving a spate of time with that person.
Not knowing where to begin we shall simply proceed at random.
Having a good friend, Adolphe Gueymard, who had been raised six miles downriver from St. Gabriel at Carville, chief oil loan officer at the First City National Bank of Houston, I asked him whether he knew George H. Bush. When he said yes, I told him I thought that Bush, who was then running Zapata Oil Company, was an up and comer, and asked him to arrange a meeting, which he did.
I went to Houston and spent an hour with Bush whom I found very pleasant and likely to succeed, but not in the genius category.
When I was taking playwriting in Columbia graduate school, a friend who was writing his thesis on W.H. Auden asked me to go with him to have lunch with and interview Auden, which I did. We met at the Automat. Apparently, Auden had a hangover and did not display much of his genius that day.
When I left Columbia and New York I hitchhiked across the country. My first stop was at Boulder, Colorado, where I attended a writers session and met Eric Knight, author of The Flying Yorkshireman, and other well known authors. Knight was killed in a South American flight later that year.
While walking on the streets of Boulder, with a friend, I saw this fellow, and asked aren’t you Tommy Dorsey. He said yes, so we went into a café’ and I bought him a beer and we had a pleasant conversation.
One of my most memorable meetings was when I was President of the Baton Rouge Symphony, and our manager, Gino Baldini, said to me, Sir Thomas Beecham is conducting the Royal Philharmonic in New Orleans, don’t you want to go. So my wife, Gino and I headed for New Orleans. They played the Mozart Horn Concerto featuring the top notch French horn player, Dennis Brain, who was killed walking across a street in London later that year.
At the end of the concert, Gino asked would you like to meet Sir Thomas? Do you know him? I asked. Gino responded affirmatively, so Gino and I went backstage. Sir Thomas was wiping off the sweat with a big towel, which he threw aside upon spying Gino and exclaimed, “Gino!” and grabbed him.
Then I asked Sir Thomas where he was staying. He told me at that little hotel on Toulouse Street. I asked if I could drive him there. He said “Yes.”
I had a rather beat up Dodge car on which the right front door wasn’t working due to manipulation by my boys.
Sir Thomas entered the front left door and maneuvered his bulky frame underneath the steering well to the right front seat. Gino and Sir Thomas’s manager sat on the back seat. I drove.
For some reason I couldn’t find Toulouse street, so we drove around for a half an hour. Meanwhile Sir Thomas and I were conducting this amiable conversation about his going to Mississippi for his next concert and many other matters.
Eventually I found the hotel and Sir Thomas clambered out and we said goodbye.
Several years later, I was talking to the building manager where my law office was located. His name was Kehoe. He said he was going to Ireland to visit his relatives.
I encountered him after his return. He said to me, “Oh1 by the way, I need to tell you what happened to me in London.
“I went to hear the Royal Philharmonic because my cousin plays in it. After the concert he said I’ll take you to meet Sir Thomas, When he did Sir Thomas asked where I was from. When I told him Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he asked, “Do you know my good friend, Burton LeBlanc?’ Of course, this was a man who conducted without a score.
I will throw in a lighter side.
In Aspen, one evening I was at my favorite restaurant, the Ute City Bank, where you were sitting at the bar between the science editor of the New Yorker and a gold explorer, when this girl came in. She said you look like an interesting person, so why don’t you sit at the table and talk with me, which I did.
She had just divorced her doctor husband in Miami and he had provided her with a handsome settlement. She opened a dress shop in Aspen and called it Therapy, which became the most successful dress shop in Aspen.
A week or so later, having skied all day and eaten, at the last minute, rather than turning in, I decided to go up to the disco.
When seated on one of the luxurious chairs provided, the girl I had met at Ute City came in. She had in tow five good looking chicks and about the neatest decided to sit by me. We had a great conversation and then I asked her to dance. She was a marvelous dancer, swirling down to the floor and up. After we had returned, some other fellow asked her to dance. Then my friend came over and sat next to me. She asked me if I knew who the person was I had talked to and danced with. I said no, but that she was a good conversationalist and dancer. She said, “That was Cher!”
Also, in Aspen there was this fellow lolling at the foot of the ski lift. I did not know him. He saved me a seat and we rode up the ski lift together. He told me he was John Warner. He had recently left Elizabeth Taylor. We had an agreeable chat, discussing among other things, our mutual acquaintance, Russell Long.
The best restaurant we had in Baton Rouge was The Village. Clark Gable used to like to make movies around Baton Rouge. He would stay at the motel across the street and eat at The Village every night.
I took many people there. One I recall was the Baroness Von Trapp. She was an intelligent person and we had a lively discussion. On one subject, slavery, we all agreed that it was bad, but she knew little about its background.
I had Abigail Van Buren at my home for supper. The other guests peppered her with questions which she answered neatly.
When the Japanese industrialists were making their first inroads into this country, I participated in a luncheon in New Orleans where there were only about twelve people at the table, about six Japanese and six Americans. I said between the chiefs of two of the largest Japanese companies and walked back to the hotel with another one. They all invited me to visit them at their homes.
Later I assisted in arranging for fifty Japanese business men to attend a luncheon at a restaurant near the Sunshine Bridge, between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
Having kept up with Russian affairs since my college days, and visiting most European countries including Russia, and then after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia, when I learned that Gorbachev was coming to New Orleans, I arranged to attend a small meeting where he gave an interesting speech and I talked with him for quite some length afterwards. That was a brain that had some unfortunate developments at what should have been the zenith of his career.
Due to my interest in music I have chatted with a number of famous musicians including Arthur Rubensein whom I met on two occasions, once in an intimate setting.
Of course, I have met and known many people active in political life. My wife and I would be invited to the Governor’s Mansion when Blanche and Earl K. Long would have guests. He rarely said a word at those functions. Since drinking was not permitted at them, on one occasion there was a fellow in the oil business that I knew who happened to be staying at the Mansion and he took me to his room and gave me a drink of scotch.
I was a classmate in law school with Russell B. Long and knew him well. I was a close friend of DeLesseps “Chep” Morrison, the far sighted Mayor of New Orleans.
I had been a roommate in law school, with John McKeithen, who served as Governor of Louisiana for two terms.
This is a smattering of the interesting and influential people I have met.