- Date Of Birth: February 22, 1921
- Date Of Death: June 11, 2015
- State: Louisiana
J.
A soft-spoken, elfin man, Mr.
Nevertheless, Mr. Schoen was still vigilant.
As the director carefully folded the cloth and placed it inside the casket, Schoen imitated the moves with his hands.
“Once I saw a colleague yank the throw off the casket and throw it in, and I found myself saying, ‘Garic doesn’t do it that way,’ ” Patrick Schoen said. “Garic was someone you could aspire to be.”
He acquired that reputation during a career in which he helped plan the last rites for a host of New Orleanians, including the entertainer Louis Prima, U.S. Rep. F. Edward Hébert, former Gov. David Treen and Archbishop Joseph Francis Rummel.
When K Hinrichs Prudhomme, the wife of Cajun chef Paul Prudhomme, died, Schoen let the crew from K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen take over the Mediterranean-style mortuary on Canal Street to prepare and serve some of the restaurant’s spicy specialties to hordes of mourners.
“It was very kind of him to do that,” Prudhomme said in a 2008 interview.
Mr.
That event, which included a procession from Notre Dame Seminary to St. Louis Cathedral, was the last at which he officiated, Patrick Schoen said.
Mr. Schoen never used his first name, John, because he preferred Garic, his mother’s maiden name. He graduated from Jesuit High School and attended Loyola University but did not graduate. He served in the Army in World War II.
When he returned, he told his father, Philip Schoen Jr., that he wanted a career in real estate instead of the family business.
“No, you’re not,” he said his father told him.
And that was that, said Eleanor Douglass “Susan” Schoen, his wife, in an interview.
Working around dead people was nothing new for Mr.
In a 2008 interview, Mr.
Mr. Schoen was a passionate golfer who was a former president of Metairie Country Club, City Park Golf Club and New Orleans Golf Association and a founder of the New Orleans Open (now the Zurich Classic of New Orleans), the annual Cystic Fibrosis Golf Classic (now the Hornbeck Offshore Bobby Hebert Golf Classic), and the Archbishop Philip M. Hannan Golf Classic.
Through golf, he met Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus.
Mr.
Among the awards he received were the New Orleans Archdiocese’s Order of St. Louis Medal, an honorary life membership from Kiwanis International and the honorary chairmanship of the 2008 Zurich Classic.
Mr. Schoen was named one of the “Ten Outstanding Persons in New Orleans” by the Institute of Human Understanding, and Jesuit High School named him its alumnus of the year in 1994.
In the 2008 interview, Mr.
Mr.
“No, Your Holiness, we did not,” Mr. Schoen replied, touching off a round of loud laughter.
Survivors include his wife, Eleanor Douglass “Susan” Schoen; a son, John Garic “Chick” Schoen Jr. of Dallas; a daughter, Susan Schoen Holmes of New Orleans; five grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.