St. John's Cathedral & Cemetary

I headed out last week to meet my painting buddy, Denise Broussard, in Lafayette, LA for an afternoon of painting.  We decided on St. John's Cathedral and I was particularly drawn to the back of the Church with the graveyard beyond the iron fence.

St. John's Cathedral & Cemetary

10 x 8 - oils on canvas

*This painting can be purchased on my website www.mariarandolph.com

Okay so of course I have a story about this cemetary.  The cemetary lies behind the church and is next to Cathedral-Carmel School.  

When my father, who was one of eight children, was a young boy in first grade he and his older sisters would walk to school every day through the graveyard.  My dad was very afraid of the nuns who taught school at Cathedral. He talked his older sister into letting him hide in the graveyard every day so he didn't have to go to school.  She agreed.  Every morning she would drop him off in the graveyard, sneak out of school at lunch time to check on him then pick him up on their way home from school.  This went on for almost a year.

How did he get away with this for so long you are probably wondering.  Well, with 8 children and work, things must have been really hectic in their household.  His older sister signed his report card and when the school finally called his parents they all got caught.  He ended up having to repeat the first grade and was in a whole lot of trouble.  

At some of our family functions, my aunts used to tell the story and laugh about how T-Man (his name was Manuel) swung from the graveyard for almost year until they got caught.