Wilson Breaux’s fidelity to a silent cohort

By Peter Finney Jr.
Clarion Herald

Wilson Breaux, a retired accountant for an oil and gas company, lived in Mid-City when Katrina hit and swallowed up just about everything he owned.

After the levees broke and the waters rose, Breaux waded in chest-high water to the Superdome, and he told his closest friends never to ask him about his days there because he would not talk about what he had witnessed.

There was a lot of mystery about Breaux, who died on Pentecost Sunday, May 28, at the age of 87.

Before Katrina, he put $100 down on a St. Jude’s Dream Home Giveaway raffle ticket and actually wound up winning a palatial house, but he decided to sell it and lived frugally, quietly stocking away the unexpected savings.

He never bought a car.

Breaux lived in a modest, two-story condo in Fat City with a small dining room table and two chairs – but which had no sofa, La-Z-Boy or TV – and a friend who saw only the first floor said he “probably” had a bed upstairs.

As a daily communicant, Breaux would walk two miles to St. Angela Merici Church in Metairie for the early morning Mass, then pick up a biscuit and a quick cup of coffee and walk to the Causeway Medical Clinic, a bustling abortion facility on Ridgelake Drive, making sure he got there before the first cars arrived with women who felt they had no choice other than to surrender the inconvenient life they were carrying.

That two-mile walk was nothing. Before Katrina chased Breaux to Metairie, he would take the Canal Street bus to the cemeteries and then transfer to the Metairie bus, rain or shine.

The gravity of what went on inside that abortion clinic compelled Breaux to continue acting – praying and using that five-second interaction with a pregnant woman to have her consider a pro-life alternative – without counting the cost.

At times, Breaux recalled in a rare interview, the abortion clinic’s two entrances were so packed with cars they “looked like Burger King or McDonald’s” at lunchtime.

“We’ve seen Mercedes, Jaguars, Lincolns,” Breaux told the Clarion Herald in 2003. “I guess they’re just caught up with themselves. But we never try to judge people.”

While Breaux and a few other prayer warriors prayed the rosary and sprinkled holy water on the building appropriated as a death chamber for the unborn, it was tough to see the pro-life voices outnumbered.

“There might be 40 or 50 people in there at a time,” Breaux said. “That’s when it gets discouraging.”

Discouraging was one reality. Fidelity was a stronger reality.

At least three days a week and sometimes more, Breaux walked to Ridgelake and led the pro-life group in prayer. Years later, when the Metairie facility closed, he organized sidewalk prayer vigils at both the new Planned Parenthood clinic on South Claiborne Avenue (which did not have an abortion license) and at an abortion clinic on General Pershing Street in New Orleans.

Breaux was all about the power of presence. After all, he often said, God only knows how many women had driven to the clinic, seen men and women praying the rosary, and then turned away after thinking things through.

Breaux said several times taxi drivers bringing women to Ridgelake handed over their fares to the prayer group.

“One driver told me he was required to drive people here, but he didn’t want to keep the money,” Breaux said.

Breaux began praying in front of abortion clinics in the late 1980s when he joined a group formed by Pam and John Richard that was targeting the Delta Women’s Clinic in uptown New Orleans. He learned on the job that sometimes being able to hand a leaflet to a woman could save a life.

He never harangued.

“I’ve always felt inadequate trying to counsel in front of the clinic, especially since my original intentions were to pray,” Breaux said. “But God has shown me that I don’t have to have the gift of talking. With all my faults, the Holy Spirit takes over and uses me. Thank God for that.”

By simply showing up every day, Breaux got to know the abortionists and engage them in conversation, said his friend, Judy Leggett Martin.

“He said to the doctor, who had a number of gold chains and jewelry around his neck, ‘Doctor, you know you’re killing babies. Why do you do this? You could choose another form of medicine,’” Martin said. “And the doctor said, ‘Why do I need to change?’ And, he pointed to the gold chains around his neck.”

Gary Durel, who joined Breaux’s sidewalk ministry, traced Breaux’s passion for prolife activity to the semi-annual retreats he made at Manresa. Breaux may not have owned a TV, but he made sure he went to the Jesuit retreat house in Convent twice a year.

“It must have been right around the time of his retirement because I remember him saying after the retreat, ‘God, what do you want me to do now?’” Durel said. “I think that was the catalyst. I don’t know how God followed up on that, but obviously there was a dotted-line message – direct or indirect – from the Lord that was clear enough to him: ‘This is it.’”

Breaux grew up in the French Quarter, attending St. Louis Cathedral School and St. Aloysius High School. Another friend, Mary Landry, said he nearly dropped out of St. Aloysius because his parents couldn’t afford the tuition.

“He told the school if they let him attend for free, he would pay off his tuition when he graduated and got a job,” Landry said. “Wilson said it took him several years, but he paid it all back.”

Breaux begged off interview requests after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Dobbs decision in 2022 that reversed nearly 50 years of Roe v. Wade’s abortion on demand, the ruling he had spent his entire adult life challenging.

“As I told you many times, I really don’t want to be highlighted in any story,” he replied with characteristic candor.

Breaux was a great warrior but not a great editor. His showing up to save babies – day after day – was the story.

“I believe those babies in heaven are all surrounding him and thanking him,” Landry said, “because for some of those babies, he was the only one who ever cared about them on earth.”

[email protected]