Funeral mass scheduled for writer, scholar Coleen Salley Times Picayune September 24, 2008 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ New Orleans lost one of its great treasures with the passing of Coleen Salley last week. Courtesy of Whitney StewartColeen Salley pictured with Whitney Stewart during Mardi Gras. She was many things to many people -- a wife, a mother, a writer, a teacher and scholar, a storyteller, an advocate. Everyone who encountered her has some lively mental picture of her -- whether clad in a muumuu, wearing a duck hat on her had, or decked out in Mardi Gras regalia for her shopping cart ride as Queen of the Krewe of Coleen. Everyone who ever heard it remembers the sound of her voice, that greeting -- "How y'all DEWin'?" -- usually followed by a conspiratorial, "Listen to this!" Once you heard that gravelly growl of hers, it was a siren song, a call to mischief, a warning to pay attention. She smoked and drank (for most of her life, that is, until she shaped up, driven by health concerns); she cussed like a sailor; and she loved children's books. She loved a dip in the pool (and was one of the few women I've met who never gave a thought to how she looked in a bathing suit) or a long dinner with friends. She was irresistible. She could be the angel -- or the devil -- on your shoulder, depending on what you needed at the time. As her son David said, "She crammed 150 years of living into 79." I first met Coleen Salley when I worked at the University of New Orleans Book Store. Once a semester, she would bring her children's literature class into the store and would pluck books from the shelves to read to her students. She was so good, so expressive -- and had such a vivid presence -- that everyone would stop to listen. They had no choice. She had an amazing emotional range, with a divine sense of comedy and a deep understanding of sadness. Invariably everyone would end up with tears in their eyes, moved by the simple power of a woman reading a children's story aloud. Once I saw historian Stephen Ambrose stop to listen like everyone else, one great storyteller checking out another's best moves. Writer/artist Bill Joyce recalls taking Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Co. executives to Salley's French Quarter apartment. When she loudly greeted them at the door, brandy milk punch in hand, they looked at him as if to say, "What have you gotten us into?" "But in 10 minutes," he said, "they were sitting at her feet. Literally." Later, they called on Joyce to arrange for Salley to visit with every studio division and he said, "I would get these e-mails from people, thanking me for bringing her, reminding them of the simple power of story." Salley was 31 when she lost her husband, George Elmore Salley. She had been married for 4½ years, and she had three young children. "I was 33 before I came to grips with it," she told New Orleans writer Whitney Stewart. "I didn't give up on God, but I shook my fist at him for two years. And then I just picked myself up and marched on. And I've had a wonderful life." She loved to tell stories about her three children -- George, Genevieve and David -- and she loved to hear stories about everyone else's kids. She always remembered their names. Being with Salley was like being with family, even if you had just met her. She told stories everywhere she went and she went everywhere. Whenever you talked with her, she was always off to somewhere magical. She'd be visiting storyteller Ashley Bryan on an island off the coast of Maine, or traveling to Hong Kong, China, Thailand, Egypt, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands or Canada, not to mention most of the United States. She was friends with the famous writers and illustrators, but she acted as a fairy godmother to beginners. She was tireless in her support of local writers and artists, and a host of them -- Berthe Amoss, Pat Austin, Jean Cassels, Lisa Cohen, Amy Dixon, Freddi Evans and Whitney Stewart, among them -- benefited from her time and attention. She was a shining thread in the fabric of the New Orleans literary life, filming a national VISA commercial for Cindy Dike's Maple Street Children's Book Shop and supporting Kevin McCaffrey and Jane Haase's Children's Hour Book Shop during its brief and glorious existence on Magazine Street. Judith Lafitte, proprietor of Octavia Books, was one of her students. And when her books came out, Salley went to all the local bookstores, relishing reading her own stories. She wanted to be seen -- and she was. She wanted to be remembered - - and she will be. She will live on in the pages of the books she wrote about Epossumondas, that mischievous young possum, who first appeared in "Epossumondas" in 2002, and she endures in such classics as Tomie dePaola's "The Legend of Old Befana." To honor her, the Coleen Salley Storytelling Endowment has been established at the University of Southern Mississippi, which houses the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection. The de Grummond Collection sponsors the Fay B. Kaigler Children's Book Festival held each April in Hattiesburg, one of Salley's favorite events. Her children have donated her extensive children's book collection to the de Grummond Collection. Bill Joyce suggested yet another way to honor her. "I think we should start the Krewe of Coleens," he said. "Maybe let's all dress up just like her and parade around the Quarter with her effigy in a shopping cart." Get your muumuus and tiaras ready, readers. The Queen would love it -- Coleen Salley everywhere in the Quarter on Mardi Gras! The world would be a better place. A funeral Mass will be held at our Lady of Guadalupe Church, 411 N. Rampart St., on Saturday at 10:30 a.m. Visitation will follow at Coleen's residence in the French Quarter. Donations can be made to the Coleen Salley Storytelling Endowment, USM Foundation, 118 College Drive, Box 10026, Hattiesburg, MS 39406.