Vicki Claire Boudreaux Rose

Vicki Clair Boudreaux was born on June 30, 1956, the third daughter of Allie and Anne Boudreaux. She thought of her older sister, Evelyn, as a glamorous movie star. Her middle sister, Sandra, was her partner in crime, or more accurately, the witness to her antics, such as the time Vicki “drove their mother’s car” by shifting their car into gear, causing Vicki and Sandra and the Boudreaux family Chevrolet to roll backwards across traffic and into an available parking spot across the street. At the time of Vicki’s arrival, the Boudreaux’s and Allie’s nephew and his wife, Hilman and Sybil Boudreaux, were operating the Dairy Pride ice cream stand in Church Point, first for the summer and then year-round. By 1959, the Boudreaux’s had a thriving business and a new little brother, Brent. One of her fondest memories of this time was being the early bird who “helped” her father make coffee on the stove each morning before work. She and Sandra also enjoyed playing together and convincing Brent to let his G.I. Joe go on dates with their Barbie dolls. Vicki attended Our Lady of the Sacred Heart elementary school from first through eighth grades, and then later Church Point High School. Like her older sisters, Vicki helped out at the Dairy Pride but also helped her cousin Al Boudreaux with “eating the profits” while off shift. Vicki was voted “Most Studious” by her eighth-grade classmates and inauspiciously played Spiro Agnew in their 1968 mock election. In school, Vicki was extremely involved with civic groups to help her community, including 4H, the Young Generations Civics Club, Future Business Leaders of America, Pelican Girls’ State, and Beta Club, and she never shied away from organizing people and leading by example.

After graduating from Church Point High in 1974, Vicki received an A.S. in Nursery Management and a B.S. in Family Life and Child Management from Northeast Louisiana University, where she was on the honor roll every semester and a Who’s Who awardee. Upon graduation in 1978, Vicki took a brief detour to law school, but since, as she would later say, she already knew how to argue well enough, she left school to pursue a professional career in women’s retailing. In the fast-moving world of fashion, Vicki worked her way up from the sales floor to a buyer who traveled the world, first for Godchaux’s/Maison Blanche in Baton Rouge and then, later, with Casual Corner in Enfield, Connecticut. Vicki’s retail career was a 1980s movie come to life – a closet full of shoulder-padded outfits, many shiny accessories, exciting trips to New York, Korea, Los Angeles, and beyond, and a newfangled technology called “inter-office electronic mail.” In these roles, she mastered every aspect of retail operations and found herself at the peak of her career when she felt a calling to return to her roots. She moved back to Church Point in 2003 and found what she described as purpose-driven work as the Chief Operations Officer at Acadiana Outreach Center and later as the director of Acadiana Youth, Inc., both shelters for children and families. Reconnecting with family and friends after living in New England for over 15 years, Vicki switched gears to a Hallmark Channel movie when she attended the 2004 Richard family reunion with her good friend Lilly Richard and was reintroduced to Lilly’s great-nephew, Michael Rose. Although their lives had intertwined even before he was born, that reintroduction sparked a romance that she said was worth the five decades of patiently waiting. Their first official date was on her birthday in 2004 at Pat’s Downtown in Lafayette and they married on Cinco De Mayo 2018, 14 short years later (Mike says not to ask about this delay).

It’s hard to believe that the former “Most Studious” could be so garrulous, but Vicki, like her father before her, was a natural storyteller and not just in words, but in hand gestures, animated faces, and loud laughs. Even on her hardest days, she was light to those around her. She made friends easily and carried her closest friends with her – friends to whom she talked for hours and hours and friends who traveled with her near and far. She loved her family and treated her nieces, nephew, great-nieces, great-nephews, godchildren, great-godchildren, and friends’ children and grandchildren as her own. She took them to big cities to explore, she mailed them care packages of new clothes and baked goods, she sent them cards with inspirational quotes, and she always encouraged them to chase their dreams and to live life on their own terms. Vicki collected fascinating things – elephant figurines, commemorative plates, Minion memorabilia, to name a few. She loved movies (and often told the story of inviting herself to The Sound of Music with Evelyn and her date, Gary, and how she insisted they all sit on the first row and she had to sit right in between them), reading books of all kinds (mostly murder mysteries and thrillers, but also good romance novels), and playing board games (all. the. board. games.). When she lived in Connecticut, she was a regular Broadway theater goer and an annual leaf peeper. She loved Newhart and the Golden Girls. On any given day, she might be dressed to the nines or wearing overalls and a Three Stooges t-shirt. She loved the songs popular when she was in high school and college and she was not afraid to sing along to a Carole King tape while driving her Monte Carlos (and, in more recent years, a non-Monte Carlo that was always a Monte Carlo to her). She innovated the combination of Lay’s barbeque chips and soft-serve vanilla ice cream as a complete meal. She was a boisterous leader and we all followed.

Vicki is survived by her loving husband of 5 years, Michael Rose; her sister, Sandra Deshotel of St. Augustine, Florida; her brother, Brent and his wife Tina Rosinski Boudreaux of Higginbotham; her brother-in-law, Gary J. Smith of Bristol; her mother- and father-in-law, Cherryl and Frank Rose of West Monroe; her sister-in-law, Pamela and her husband Patrick Campbell of Sheridan, Arkansas; six nieces, Allie and her husband Philip Schmitt of Baton Rouge; Amelia Smith Rinehart of Morgantown, West Virginia; Adriane and her husband Blayne McRae of Baton Rouge; Allyson and her husband Troy Bayard of Broussard; Alexandra and her husband James Masters of St. Augustine, Florida; and Kateland Campbell of Sheridan, Arkansas; two nephews, Jacques Deshotel of Church Point, and Hunter Campbell of Sheridan, Arkansas; two great-nieces and five great-nephews; and many friends and godchildren with whom she was very close. She was preceded in death by her parents, Allie and Anne Smith Boudreaux; her sister, Evelyn Boudreaux Smith; and her brother-in-law, Carole Deshotel. The family would like to thank, as Vicki always did in life, her friends Gwendolyn Latiolais Boudreaux and Kay Boudreaux Zaunbrecher for taking care of (and entertaining) Vicki during her illness.