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Rene de Montluzin, Sr. [Jean Rene Gabriel Viallier de Terradoux de Montluzin du Sauzay, Sr.]
December 2, 1865 - February 18, 1959
The fifth child of his parents, Rene de Montluzin, Sr., was bom in St. James Parish, Louisiana, ten years after they had emigrated from France. His father, Ludovic Adrien de Montluzin, a writer and a chemistry teacher at Jefferson College, wrapped Rene, his newborn son, in a French flag as a symbolic gesture. His son may have been bom in America, he said, but he must never forget his French ancestry. Rene never did. He was intensely patriotic toward both countries. When, for example, the news arrived in 1914 that French soldiers, driven in taxicabs to the war front 25 miles away from Paris, had stopped the German advance in its tracks in the First Battle of the Marne, he decorated all the fence posts around his house at 208 North Beach Boulevard with French and American flags.
Rene grew up in Convent, Louisiana, and his most vivid memory of his early childhood was going one day under the care of a riverboat captain to visit an aunt who lived on a plantation upriver from New Orleans. Only when he was much older did he realize that the kind Mr. Clemens, who put him off at the right landing, was Mark Twain.
After the Civil War ended, Rene and his family lived for five years in New Orleans and then moved to Bay St. Louis. When an epidemic of yellow fever in Louisiana spread to the Mississippi Gulf Coast, his mother took her two youngest children--Rene and his sister Corinne--to France for an extended visit with her family. While they were there, the Statue of Liberty was completed and was on exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 1878, lying on the ground in not-yet-assembled sections. Rene walked about in its head, but he did not see the statue standing upright until he visited New York at the age of 76 during World War II.
In 1908 he married Venie Lillian Word, and in 1910 their only child, Rene, Jr., was bom. Rene, Sr., had inherited the beach-front drugstore established in 1878 as an apothecary shop by his father, and he worked there as pharmacist and owner for half a century. The drugstore was the fifth in Mississippi, and as the years passed, its round, glass-topped showcases, rose marble counter tops, frosted glass partition shielding the prescription area from view, and rows of tall apothecary jars with gold-edged Latin labels made it a mecca for photographers. All the customers enjoyed seeing ?Mr. Rene,? who, until shortly before he died, was on hand every day, usually greeting ladies with a pleasant ?Bonjour, Madame!? as they entered and an ?Au revoir, Madame!? as they left. The drugstore was destroyed in 1969 by Hurricane Camille, a storm with a French name
De Montluzin Avenue is named for Rene de Montluzin, Sr.
He died at the age of 93, following a stroke, and was buried with full Masonic rites in the family tomb in Cedar Rest Cemetery. A few weeks before his death, he received a card and message of good wishes from General Charles de Gaulle, the new president of France. His father would have been very pleased.
[Account prepared by Emily Hosmer de Montluzin and Emily Lorraine de Montluzin, June 2013]