BOBBY ARDOIN
Editor/Consulting Writer
All of the preparatory mechanisms that I previously devised to avoid the situation were overwhelmed by a cascading emotional rush which eventually flooded the moment.
It happened quite spontaneously, publicly and without editing Saturday night in front of nearly 800 people — most of them strangers – at the Natchitoches Events Center.
The unplanned personal episode that left me choking with feelings and without eloquence, will perhaps be replayed next month for a wider audience on the Louisiana Public Broadcasting Network.
I thought I was prepared to handle the question from interviewer Lyn Rollins. Apparently I was wrong.
My rather tearful and appropriate tribute was actually an overdue moment of thanks and remembrance for two special persons, made during my Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame induction presentation.
It exploded as I remembered my parents, who took an enormous chance in April of 1948 and adopted a one-day-old boy given up by a teenage mother for adoption at the Eunice Clinic.
My parents — Sid and Lolita Ardoin each now deceased – were then in their mid-40’s, anxious and desperate to rear a child they never had. They rushed from New Orleans at a moment’s notice and drove me back home after they placed their new baby in a laundry basket.
Ironically,other than the nurses at the hospital, my new parents were the first to see me.
My biological mother has told me that at my birth 76 years ago, she was prohibited by the hospital staff from ever looking at her newborn son, although the nurses secretly compromised, she said and agreed to let her hear me cry.
I don’t know whether my new parents felt as though they were taking an enormous gamble or decided they had hit the lottery by pursuing the adoption route in order to create a family. In the end they were willing to roll the dice and endured my upbringing for 23 years.
One time after I revived my mother, then in her 80’s after she passed out on her living room floor following a heart episode, she whispered that I had always been a good son. I guess that’s all I needed to know..
The brave and loving endeavor by my parents needed to be finally noted however and I felt whatever the emotional consequences, their risk in their adopting me needed to be acknowledged and documented.
Making It Personal
My wife of 53 years, Kay Manning Ardoin, was seated at our designated table in the audience along with our son, Jason, his wife Maria and three grandchildren, Jackson, Leah and Caroline.
Lifelong friend and former AIC baseball teammate Robbie Voitier was my special guest.
Jason and family drove an extra four hours to attend the event after unloading in Galveston following a seven day Gulf of Mexico cruise.
I appreciated their testimony of endurance, especially listening to the two hours of biographical accounts of eight other inducted Hall of Famers that they didn’t know.
The caveat for the grandchildren however came after the event concluded as I persuaded newly-inducted Seimone Augustus to pose with them for photos, something the LSU legend and now women’s basketball assistant graciously accepted.
Kay, whom I met in 1970 while a UL-Lafayette graduate student and married a year later, has always been a needed source of reality, conscience and patience for an individual with sometimes reckless and selfish tendencies.
My vocational journey has been consumed with teaching an estimated 9,000-plus students over 42 years and for 56 years, chasing and writing approximately 16,500 sports and news stories that occurred nationally, regionally and locally.
Few wives could have persevered handling this wildcard child, whose roots were only recently discovered.
For someone who is supposed to be proficient with words, I have none at the moment that are sufficient or appropriate enough to compliment her four-decade effort complicated by my eyesight loss, major heart attack and Stage 4 cancer diagnosis since 2004.
The stars in her crown should be crafted in diamonds.
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