Roy & Rosalie Tidwell

Roy Tidwell, 1923-2005
Rosalie Tidwell, 1922-2005

David Cuthbert
Staff writer

To his daughters Gayle Tidwell and Dana Caruso, Roy Tidwell was "Super Dad."

Born in Slocomb, Ala., "he looked like Gregory Peck," Gayle said. He and his two brothers served in the Navy during World War II; Tidwell was awarded the Purple Heart after he was wounded at Pearl Harbor, where he lost his hearing in one ear. Three other medals included ones for the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign and European-African-Middle East Campaign.

He met their mother, Jewell Lawless, in Virginia when he was posted there and married her in 1945. After the war, they moved to New Orleans, where he worked for Gordon's Transport, Caruso said, "delivering merchandise of all sorts to many local businesses and malls. He was always smiling, wishing everyone well. He had a lot of friends. I remember one Christmas he came home with six wallets, all gifts from his customers. My aunts and uncles could always count on my dad to help them with family emergencies."

"Everybody called him 'Lucky,' " Tidwell said. "He'd come home with all kinds of things, saying, 'Look what I found walking down the street today.' "

She remembers "a life filled with animals . . . . My father raised parakeets, Chihuahuas and for a time, rabbits. He loved horses and when we were small, he took us to Jefferson Downs."

In 1964, when Dana was 13 and Gayle 17, their mother died of Crohn's disease, from which she had been suffering for five years.

"He stayed single and raised us," Caruso said. "He brought me to school every day, saying, 'There you go, Peanut.' My husband calls me that, too. He struggled financially, but tried never to let us know that. It wasn't until my sister and I had finished school and got married that he started going out. Six months after I got married, he met and married my stepmom, Rosalie Foti.

"Sheriff (now state Attorney General) Charles Foti was her nephew," Tidwell said, "and she was, as they say, a pepper."

"My stepmom, a feisty little Italian lady, worked at the cosmetics counter at Krauss," Caruso said. "She would tell funny stories about how many customers would wait in line to have 'Miss Lillie' help them pick out just the right color lipstick.

"They both loved to work alongside each other at their summer home in Waveland, Miss. Planting tomatoes was one of my dad's favorite things to do. He meticulously cared for over an acre there for 25 years.

"They had to sell their home in Waveland after my stepmother had a pacemaker installed. My stepmother teasingly said that my dad got jealous so he had to get one, too. They lived in a modest home in Gentilly. They never wanted to leave their home, or their dog, King."

And that's where they were when Katrina came ashore and the levees breached, inundating their Gentilly home. They drowned in the house together.

On Aug. 30, Caruso said, "He would have been married to her for 32 years."

Published in The Times-Picayune