Dr. Alfred Emmett Lemmon

1949 - 2023

A memorial service will be held at St. Louis Cathedral at 10 a.m. Monday, September 18, for Dr. Alfred Emmett Lemmon, 73, who passed away on Saturday, August 26, 2023, in New Orleans. A reception at The Historic New Orleans Collection, 410 Chartres Street, will immediately follow the service. Alfred was born on December 8, 1949, to the late Harold Lemmon and the late Emerite Gahn Lemmon, and was the brother of Mary Elizabeth Lemmon Simolke. Alfred was a meek but astounding presence in the community of the arts, music and history. A Lafayette, Louisiana, native, he turned a childhood fascination with New Orleans into a lifelong pursuit of researching and preserving the city's rich culture and history. After earning a bachelor's degree from New Orleans' Loyola University and a master's degree (music history) and PhD (Latin American studies) from Tulane University, Alfred in 1981 joined the staff of The Historic New Orleans Collection, a museum, research center, and publisher in the French Quarter. Through his career there, he rose to become, in 1998, director of THNOC's Williams Research Center. Recognized for his deep commitment to music history with a focus on Spain and Latin America, Alfred published more than 100 pieces of work, conducted more than 70 research papers, curated multiple exhibits and programs, served on dozens of committees, and was recognized for his work both nationally and internationally. Most recently, he served as curator for the groundbreaking bilingual exhibition "Spanish New Orleans and the Caribbean/ La Nueva Orleans y el Caribe españoles." Years in the making, the exhibition brought together 125 rarely-seen items from The Historic New Orleans Collection's holdings and institutions across Spain and the United States. Alfred also served as project director for Classical music concerts THNOC co-presents with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, and established a free concert series, Musical Louisiana: America's Cultural Heritage, staged annually in St. Louis Cathedral. Recordings of the concert have by longstanding tradition been made available to schoolchildren across Louisiana. The concert series and the "Spanish New Orleans and the Caribbean" exhibition, one of many he curated during his time at THNOC, were high-profile expressions of Alfred's passions for history and music. But his THNOC colleagues can recall countless initiatives and programs he championed to foster the careers of young musicians and historians, including a Young Artist Residency Program at St. Louis Cathedral (established in 2009) and an internship in paleography at THNOC created in partnership with École national de chartes, Paris (2007). Alfred could gracefully pivot from a huge project microfilming colonial-era records of Spanish Louisiana and West Florida (kept in Havana, Cuba, to where he traveled several times to oversee the work) to the restoration of a rare Aeolian pipe organ in THNOC's Seignouret-Brulatour House, now home to museum galleries, at 520 Royal Street. (Some knew Alfred not for his work as a scholar but for his role as organist at St. Louis Cathedral.). His work coordinating with European archives to secure rare items that told the Louisiana Purchase story were presented in the 2003 exhibition "A Fusion of Nations, A Fusion of Cultures: Spain, France, the United States and the Louisiana Purchase." In 1992, at a time when THNOC had comparatively few jazz-related holdings, Alfred worked to acquire the William Russell Jazz Collection of memorabilia, musical instruments, records, piano rolls, sheet music, photographs, books, and periodicals - a trove amassed by Russell, a historian and collector who focused on traditional New Orleans-style jazz. Alfred's work and contributions to French and Spanish culture in New Orleans has been recognized across the nation as well as France and Spain. He has received the Order of Isabella Catolica (Spain, 2011), Palmes Academiques Decree (France, 2009), Carindal Marchisano Award from the Catholic Heritage Center (2008), Order of St. Louis Archdiocese of New Orleans (2004), Louisiana Literary Award and the Louisiana Humanities Book Award for his book "Charting Louisiana: Five Hundred Years of Maps" (2004), Best in Chapter Award from the Music Library Association (2002), Distinguished Service Award from the Louisiana Archives and Manuscripts Society (2021) and the Grace King Award (Save Our Cemeteries). Those honors and others, along with citations for publications, lectures, board seats and committee service, fill Alfred's curriculum vitae, which covers 26 pages - documenting a life dedicated to scholarship, education, preservation and performance. In addition to his sister, Alfred is survived by his beloved colleagues at the Williams Research Center and The Historic New Orleans Collection (and the legacy of work he leaves them), his devoted caregivers, fellow scholars, numerous world travelers with whom he shared his wealth of knowledge, the musicians to whom he became mentor, and a host of special friends. A Mass of Christian Burial was held on Saturday, September 2, 2023 at 11:00 a.m. in the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Lafayette. Interment was held in St. John Cemetery. Reverend Seth Lemaire, JCL, Parochial Vicar at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, was the Celebrant of the Funeral Mass and officiate at the services. In lieu of flowers, it is suggested that Alfred's many friends honor his memory and life's work with a donation to The Historic New Orleans Collection at hnoc.org/support.