Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans (39 page)

About the Authors

Joan Boudousquié Garvey retired in 1997 after twenty years in the New Orleans public school system as a teacher and administrator. She has been a guide for Smithsonian Institute Southern Tours and has lectured on New Orleans and Louisiana history for the Louisiana Tourist Promotion Association and the Friends of the Cabildo. A native New Orleanian, she received a BA from Loyola University of the South and MA from UNO. She is married to Walter Garvey. They have seven children and twelve grandchildren. A paternal ancestor, Antoine Boudousquié, printer in New Orleans in the service of the Spanish in 1795, and Charles Boudousquié, a paternal great-grandfather, the Impresario of the French Opera before the Civil War, provide credentials for her membership as a Louisiana Colonial.

Mary Lou Schultis Widmer is a novelist-historian and native New Orleanian. She graduated from Loyola University. After teaching for sixteen years, she retired to devote her time to writing. She is married to Albert F. Widmer Sr. and has two children and four grandchildren. She is the past president of Romance Writers of America’s Southern Louisiana Chapter and a member of the Daughters of 1812 and Louisiana Colonials organisations, having certified her descent from ancestors living in Louisiana before 1803.