Marie McNabb

Marie Louise Duplantis McNabb, the matriarch of the Carl McNabb, Sr. clan, passed peacefully into the hereafter on March 2.  She was 92.  She joins her husband “Mac” and two daughters, Patricia McNabb and Lisa McNabb, where they are now establishing a Crescent Boulevard above –-- lined with clouds instead of magnolia trees and populated with family and long-time neighbors turned angels.  ​Marie’s house was filled with a laughter that was legendary.  She welcomed family, friends, her children’s friends, and her grandchildren’s friends with open arms and always a cup of coffee or a Coke.  It has also been said in later years that she had the coldest beer and the best advice in town.  ​She met and married her late husband  while he was stationed with the US Navy at the Houma Blimp Base during WWII.   They lost their first-born child, Patricia, while he was engaged in war operations in the Phillipines.  Unable to return for the funeral, he wrote her one of the most heart wrenchingly beautiful letters which the family has kept these long years.  Her second-born, Kathleen, contracted meningitis  at age three which began a difficult and months-long hospitalization at Charity Hospital in New Orleans. Though the illness was arrested with then experimental drugs, Kathleen was left mentally and physically disabled, but no child could have been more loved or cared for.  Marie served on the board at TARC and helped to establish and grow the organization as it exists today at the Houma Air Base, and she was forever grateful for TARC’s services in helping Kathleen live to her full potential. Her tough-as-nails spirit was called to task yet again when her husband was critically injured in an auto wreck on his way home from work with Halliburton in 1969. It took him out of commission for 18 months. The family navigated this setback  successfully due in no small part to her ability to run a household with little help.  ​Having learned through tragedy the precariousness of this life, she turned a cheek to the emotional pain and adopted the motto “Laugh and the world laughs with you – weep, and you weep alone”.  She reveled in the accomplishments and escapades, large and small,  of her next three children,  Carolyn, Buddy and Lisa and enjoyed every birthday, every holiday and every event involving them to the fullest.  Tragedy struck again, however, when she lost her daughter Lisa to a car accident in 2000.  Unbowed, she continued to give comfort to others who were down, and continued up to the end to share a hearty chuckle when needed. In her last years, her only great grandchild, Marli, gave her immense delight.  She is survived and dearly missed by daughters Kathleen Marie McNabb and Carolyn Ann McNabb and her son Carl (“Buddy”) Leroy McNabb, Jr. and wife Claire; grandchildren Jennifer L. McNabb, Michael D. McNabb and wife Stephanie, and Zachary McNabb.  She has one great grandchild, Marli McNabb.  (And "part-time son",  Richard Watkins. ) She was predeceased by:  her mother Marie Louise Chauvin Duplantis, her father Camille Charles Duplantis, Sr., her sisters Muriel Duplantis and Mary Tracy Duplantis, her brothers Elmore Joseph Duplantis, Elton Joseph Duplantis, Thaddeus Baker Charles Duplantis, and Camille Charles Duplantis, Jr., her husband Carl Leroy McNabb, Sr., and her daughters Patricia McNabb and Lisa McNabb.  Services will be held March 4 at Chauvin Funeral Home in Houma from 3:00-5:00 p.m.  with a Liturgy of the Word at 5:00 p.m.   Graveside services are deferred to a later date.  In lieu of flowers, Marie would appreciate donations to T.A.R.C in Houma.  Chauvin Funeral Home, Inc., is honored to serve the McNabb family.