Queer Places:
1030 N Wilson Way, Stockton, CA 95205
Upstairs Lounge Fire Memorial, 604 Iberville St, New Orleans, LA 70130
Resthaven Memorial Park
New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Louisiana, USA
Ferris Jerome LeBlanc (June 22, 1923 - June 24, 1973)
was a World War II veteran who died in a 1973 fire that killed 32 people at a popular French Quarter gay bar called the UpStairs Lounge. A few anonymous individuals stepped
forward and paid for the three unknown men's burials, and they were buried
with Ferris LeBlanc, whose body, despite being identified, was never
claimed by the family. They were laid to rest in separate coffins in a city-owned field behind Resthaven Memorial Park on Old Gentilly Road.
LeBlanc's family would not learn of his death in the arson attack until
January 2015. They were granted access to the potter's field on May 13.
Resthaven's records show that LeBlanc is buried in Panel Q, Lot 32 of the
field, but the graves were never marked. The coroner's office, the family
was told, kept those records, and all of them were destroyed by Hurricane
Katrina's flood waters.
Ferris Jerome LeBlanc was born in Cheboygan, Michigan, to Eugene Louis LeBlanc
(1872–1934) and
Marie Louise Durocher (1890–1977). On June 6, 1944, a 20-year-old closeted gay Ferris LeBlanc sheltered with his Army unit—the 665th Ordnance Ammunitions Company—at a remote base near Manchester. Across the English Channel, approximately 156,000 Allied soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy in one of the largest amphibious assaults in human history: D-Day. Men like LeBlanc waited their turns. Chills ran down spines as they wondered whether the Germans would beat their friends back into the cold waters. LeBlanc, a California boy, had seen much since his enlistment in Sacramento. His unit, the 665th, was duly activated in April 1943 at Camp Maxey, Texas, and he participated in that year’s Louisiana Maneuvers, a major military exercise in the backwoods of the Pelican State. He shipped out to Europe aboard US Navy Transport NY 198 on February 27, 1944 and passed the Statue of Liberty on his way to Bristol, where a British Army band and one lone American Red Cross attendant provided a solemn welcome. Chow was powdered food and spam until he tasted the candy in his invasion pack on June 25, 1944, when his troop transport ship slipped the docks of Southampton, destination Utah Beach. Weeks blurred into months on the European mainland as his unit ran Depot 100 for the First Army and then headed west to Depot 13 in Brittany. There, they supplied “hurry-up” ammunition to General George S. Patton as the Third Army made its mad dash across France and Belgium. Nearly trapped behind advancing Germans in the Battle of the Bulge, the 665th was ultimately saved when Patton’s Third Army reached Bastogne and broke the counteroffensive. One of LeBlanc’s final posts, Depot 0-609, was situated in a former German concentration camp surrounded by barbed-wire fences, providing a stark reminder of the stakes of the conflict. LeBlanc made it through the war uninjured, at least physically, and with his sexuality undiscovered. His core unit, the 665th, suffered but one casualty.
For a time he lived in San Francisco in the Bay Area. He
was a hairdresser, licensed, and his partner and he had a salon. He was
out with his family, and he attended family meeting with his boyfriend. While Ferris was very close to his brothers and sisters, a bad business deal left him estranged from his family. He left California and the family lost contact with him. Whether driven by embarrassment or fear, Ferris never let his family know where he moved.
On June 24, 1973, an arsonist set fire to a gay bar in New Orleans called the UpStairs Lounge. Thirty-two people were killed during that inferno. Many consider it the largest gay mass murder in U.S. history. Some victims were burned so badly they could only be identified by dental records. Others were identified by personal belongings, including
Ferris LeBlanc who was identified by a ring he was wearing.
He had celebrated his 50th birthday two days before the fire. Even though he was positively identified, Ferris’s body was never claimed for burial. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one who wasn't claimed. The mother of one of the victims was so mortified that her son died in a gay bar, she refused to claim the body; she felt her family would be embarrassed. Since Ferris’s body was not claimed, he and three unidentified men were buried in a cemetery designated for indigents.
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