Columnist, Historian 'Pie' Dufour Is Dead Times Picayune 05-28-1996 ************************************************* Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ Charles L. "Pie" Dufour, a newspaperman and historian whose work was a touchstone of New Orleans journalism for more than half a century, died Sunday at Mercy+Baptist Medical Center's Uptown campus. He was 93. Besides turning out more than 9,700 installments of "Pie Dufour's a la Mode," his daily column, Mr. Dufour wrote 19 books and more than 50 scholarly articles, taught history at Tulane University and lectured to countless clubs and conventions. During the summers, he led what he called "drip-dry tours" through Europe, and they provided fodder for his columns. His 20th book, "Louisiana Yesterday and Today," which he wrote with Walter G. Cowan and John Wilds, is to be published in July. "I think he was one of the leading historians of Louisiana," said Cowan, a former editor of The States-Item. "His work on the Civil War and the history of New Orleans and Louisiana is so thoroughgoing that I don't know of any other single author who could touch him." Mr. Dufour wrote on subjects as diverse as classical music, Carnival and Tulane football. He heard such opera legends as Enrico Caruso and Rosa Ponselle, and the people he interviewed ranged from Arnold Toynbee, the renowned British historian, to "Oyster Joe" Martina, the New Orleans Pelicans' pitcher. He did all his work on an ancient manual typewriter that he steadfastly refused to swap for an electric model. When Mr. Dufour retired from The States-Item at the end of 1978, as computers were making inroads into the newsroom, he was one of the few staff members still using a manual typewriter. Mr. Dufour, whose nickname was bestowed in childhood, came from a family with deep roots in New Orleans and journalism. His great-grandfather brought his family to the city in 1809, six years after the Louisiana Purchase and three years before Louisiana became a state. A great-uncle published L'Abeille (The Bee), a French-language newspaper printed in New Orleans from 1857 to 1921. He was born in New Orleans in 1903, the son of state appeals court Judge Horace L. Dufour. He enrolled at Tulane in 1921 in a pre-law curriculum; as second baseman for the baseball team, he once hit a triple that gave Tulane a 2-1 victory over Louisiana State University. He also started working part time as a reporter for The New Orleans Item. He continued this double life until his dean told him he would have to choose between getting an education and earning a living. "I told him I was just trying to keep alive," Mr. Dufour recalled in a 1974 interview. "Since my appreciation of Louisiana jurisprudence was at irreparable variance with the legal doctrines then promulgated by the state legislative and judicial authorities, I could make no valuable contribution to the existing body of law. I quit." On June 30, 1924, he started full-time reporting for The Item. From then until 1940, he was a reporter, a sports writer and music critic for the paper. He left The Item in 1940 to do a radio sports show. That lasted until 1942, when he joined the Army and was assigned to be an airplane mechanic. Since he knew nothing about that line of work, Mr. Dufour jokingly referred to himself as "Hitler's secret weapon." He was commissioned a second lieutenant in August 1943 and assigned to military intelligence in Washington, then to Beirut, Lebanon, as an assistant military attache to Syria and Lebanon. He left the Army as a major in July 1946. When he returned to civilian life, Mr. Dufour did public relations for Jackson Brewing Co. and, later, New Orleans Public Service Inc., which not only provided electricity to New Orleans but also operated the buses and streetcars. For transit riders, Mr. Dufour founded Rider's Digest, a free weekly newsletter containing quips, sports news, Hollywood gossip and essays on New Orleans history. He returned to newspapering in November 1949 with a daily column that ran Mondays through Saturdays in The New Orleans States - later in The States-Item - and Sundays in The Times-Picayune. He also wrote music criticism. Besides his newspaper output, Mr. Dufour wrote history books, including "Ten Flags in the Wind," a history of the Louisiana territory; three Civil War books, "Gentle Tiger," "The Night the War Was Lost" and "Nine Men in Gray"; and "Women Who Cared," a history of the Christian Woman's Exchange on its centennial in 1981. In gratitude for "Women Who Cared," the service organization made him an Honorary Christian Woman. He also wrote about Carnival. Each year, on the day one of the older organizations was scheduled to parade, he devoted his column to that krewe. In the newsroom, he was an arbiter of Carnival style, inveighing against infractions such as "King Rex," which, he hastened to point out, is redundant. Mr. Dufour wrote centennial histories of the Knights of Momus and the Krewe of Proteus. With Leonard V. Huber, he wrote "If Ever I Cease to Love: One Hundred Years of Rex, 1872-1971," a privately published history of the Rex organization. He was steeped in Carnival, and his devotion to the annual observance was legend. On Mardi Gras morning, the diminutive Mr. Dufour could be spotted on St. Charles Avenue, wearing the Rex organization's tie - black with thin purple, green and gold stripes - and standing on tiptoe on the curb, peering Uptown as eagerly as a child, straining for the first glimpse of the Carnival king's parade. "Huey Long spoke of every man a king," Mr. Dufour told an interviewer, "and that's what Mardi Gras does. It's democratic in that everyone can be a king." There was a rumor that Mr. Dufour once was Comus, the monarch of the oldest krewe who reigns in masked anonymity, wielding a goblet instead of a scepter. But when an interviewer asked him about it, Mr. Dufour quickly changed the subject, saying, "That's a military secret." He was a member of the Boston and Louisiana clubs and the gourmet group La Societe des Escargots Orleanais. For a quarter-century, Mr. Dufour taught a New Orleans history course at Tulane with John Chase, the editorial cartoonist. He and Chase collaborated with Cowan, Wilds and O.K. LeBlanc on a guidebook, "New Orleans: Yesterday and Today." In 1953, he finally finished his bachelor's degree at Tulane. In November 1978, the university gave him an honorary doctorate of humane letters. At the ceremony where the degree was conferred, Mr. Dufour brandished the diploma and academic hood and said, "I want to show you that I'm making progress. It took me 32 years to get my first degree and only 25 years to get this one." In its citation accompanying the honorary degree, Tulane summed up Mr. Dufour: "He is, himself, a New Orleans tradition." Survivors include a daughter, Marie Dufour Goodwin, and three granddaughters. A Mass will be said Thursday at 11 a.m. at Lake Lawn Metairie Funeral Home, 5100 Pontchartrain Blvd. Visitation will start at 9 a.m. Burial will be in St. Louis Cemetery No. 3, 3421 Esplanade Ave.