Lafon Boys Home slated for demolition

15th June 2020   ·   0 Comments

By C.C. Campbell-Rock
Contributing Writer

There is a place in time when Black orphaned boys and girls in Louisiana were homeless but seeing their plight, the Sisters of the Holy Family provided shelter, education, healthcare and bright futures for abandoned youth. The Lafon Boys Home and St. John Berchman housed young boys and girls, respectively.

However, on some unspecified date in the near future, the Lafon Boys Home will become a footnote in history, when the stately colonial-style building at 7024 Chef Menteur Highway will be razed to the ground.

Sister M. Leona Bruner, SSF Congregational Leader, says the members of the Catholic order did not want to demolish the 68-year-old building but the condition of the structure mandates that it be removed from the land. “It’s an eyesore, a hazard,” Sister Leona said of the asbestos contaminated building, which has been empty since Hurricane Katrina.

“We’re clearing it out and it will be demolished in stages,” the congregational leader said adding, “I’m so pleased that some of the boys who came out of there have done so well. Sister Leona tells the story of one young boy who was adopted by the family of a St. Mary’s Academy student. “That you man is successful and he’s now taking care of his adopted mother.”

Exact plans for the land are still under discussion by the order and community members. “The community-at-large has suggested some things and all the sisters will come in for a big meeting,” to determine the best use of the land.

In 1933, the Lafon Boys Home served 67 orphaned boys, ages three to 18. A fire destroyed the original boys’ home but, in 1935, the Holy Family sisters and community members, who had raised enough money to build the Lafon Boys Home which stands today, according to accounts in The Louisiana Weekly.

The Lafon Boys Home closed in 1968 and reopened as the Lafon Child Development Center in 1969. However, the building was permanently shuttered after Hurricane Katrina.

“Around 1829, Henriette Delille, a Creole of color, joined Juliette Gaudin, a Haitian, and Josephine Charles, a French immigrant, and began efforts to evangelize New Orleans slaves and free people of color. In 1836, Henriette and her friends formed the Congregation of the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, New Orleans’ first confraternity of women of color. Their unofficial habit was a plain blue dress,” according to WikiVisual.

The congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family was officially established in New Orleans in 1842. In 1847, a group of free men and free women of color formed the Society of the Holy Family to give the Sisters moral and financial support. The founding nuns took private vows on October 15, 1852 in St. Augustine Church. Father Etienne Rousselou, the congregation’s advisor, named Henriette Delille Mother Superior. She took the name Sister Mary Theresa; however, everyone called her Mother Henriette. They taught enslaved children when the education of slaves was illegal.

When children were left homeless by the yellow fever epidemic in 1853, the Sisters cared for the orphans. “8,000 of the city’s residents died,” NPR reports.

The mosquito borne disease would plague the Crescent City throughout the 19th century. Over the course of spring and summer of 1878, between 13,000 and 20,000 deaths from the disease. The outbreak originated in New Orleans and spread up the Mississippi River and inland.

Overall, more than 41,000 people died from the scourge of yellow fever in New Orleans between the years 1817 (the first year that reliable statistics are available) and 1905 (the Crescent City’s last epidemic).

As a result, many children became orphaned, so in 1892, the St. John Berchman’s Orphanage for girls was dedicated by the Sisters of the Holy Family.

The following year, Thomy Lafon, a wealthy free man of color, bequeathed a building on St. Peter Street to the Sisters of the Holy Family for the purpose of establishing the Lafon Orphan Boys Asylum.

Seeking to move operations out of the French Quarter, in 1906, Mother Austin Jones purchased 123 acres of land in the Gentilly area for $10 an acre. The Lafon’s Boys Home, St. Mary’s Academy, St. Paul the Apostle Church and School, the House of the Holy Family, Delille Inn, Lafon Child Care Center, Lafon Nursing Facility of the Holy Family, and the present Motherhouse occupy that land today.

Henriette Díaz Delille died in 1862 with a reputation of holiness. The last line of her obituary reads, “. . . for the love of Jesus Christ she had become the humble and devout servant of the slaves.”

Mother Delille’s great, great grandmother, Nanette, was brought from Africa as a slave. After the death of her owner, she became free. Some years later, she had amassed enough money to purchase her daughter, Cecile, and two of her grandchildren out of slavery. Spanish law, which ruled in Louisiana at that time, allowed slaves to purchase their freedom at a fair price from the master.

In 1988, her order opened the cause for her canonization with the Holy See. Pope Benedict XVI named her Venerable on March 27, 2010. The Congregation for the Causes of Saints gave its formal assent on June 22, 2010, for the commencement of the cause of beatification with the declaration of “nihil obstat” (nothing against). Delille was given the title of Servant of God. A claimed miracle by her intercession was being investigated in 2005 and by 2017 other miracles attributed to her were under medical scrutiny.

Venerable Henriette Delille is the first United States native born African American whose cause for canonization has been officially opened by the Catholic Church. What remains for the process of sainthood to be completed is the validation of the reported miracles.

The city of New Orleans named a street as Henriette Delille in her honor.

The Sisters of the Holy Family remain active today. Its more than 300 members serve the poor by operating schools for children, nursing homes, and retirement homes in New Orleans and Shreveport, Louisiana; Washington, D.C; Galveston, Texas; Little Rock, Arkansas; and California in the United States; and a mission in Belize.

This article originally published in the June 15, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.