Chicken Pie Dynasty
Submitted by N.O.V.A. July 2005
Times Picayune 	12-4-1998


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It was with much joy and nostalgia that I read your Nov. 26 Food section about the
Garretts and their chicken pie business.

Blanche Durand Bonin, who taught Aline Mitchell Garrett how to make the pies, was
my grandmother. She did not, however, have infantile paralysis as the article
stated.

At the age of 7, she fell and fractured her hip. For a year after the accident,
she lay with a sandbag pulling her right leg, apparently the prescription for such
a fracture in those days.

Despite her disability, she gave birth to 10 children, including a set of twins.
She never cooked before her marriage to my grandfather but became a "stupendous
cook, " as your article stated, and served many magnificent meals to her children
and 25 grandchildren. She counted 67 great-grandchildren at the time of her death
in 1963 at the age of 89.

Years before her death, my grandmother taught me to make the pies, but since the
production is almost a three-day affair and the Garretts' pies far more delicious,
I, like many family members, prefer to order the pies from the Garretts.

My grandmother's last surviving child, Blanchette Bonin Bienvenu, died Nov. 20 at
the age of 98, bringing to an end an era spanning 104 years from the birth of my
grandmother's first child to the death of her last surviving child. At the funeral
and later at lunch at the home of my cousin, Aline Mitchell Garrett was present as
she has been for more than 70 years at large family gatherings.

Joyce Fournet Thibodeaux