Emilie Griffin

1936 - 2022

Emilie Dietrich Griffin, 86, passed away on October 15, 2022, at Our Lady of Wisdom Healthcare Center in Gretna, LA, of natural causes. She was born Emilie Russell Dietrich on July 22, 1936, the only child of Helen Russell Dietrich, a court reporter, and Norman Edward Dietrich. Her parents divorced in 1947, and she was raised by her mother and her grandmother, Lucy Powell Russell, founder of The Louisiana Conservationist. Emilie, known throughout childhood as "Russ," attended Isidore Newman School with her cousin and lifelong friend Henry Davis "Dave" Prescott, who later worked at Newman for 51 years. She attended high school at Louise S. McGehee School, where she graduated as valedictorian in 1953. Like her mother and grandmother before her, she attended Newcomb College. She double majored in English and Latin, and befriended John Kennedy Toole, the future author of A Confederacy of Dunces. They remained close for many years. She spent the summer of 1956 in Manhattan, as a Mademoiselle guest editor, in a program that also nurtured the careers of Sylvia Plath and Joan Didion. She returned home to finish her degree, graduating in 1957. She briefly worked as a reporter at the New Orleans Item, before becoming an advertising copywriter. In 1959, Russ Dietrich began going by "Emilie" and moved to New York to pursue a career in writing. In 1961 she answered an ad for a playwriting class taught by Edward Albee, who was then working on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. In the class she met William Griffin, who had also moved to New York to pursue a career in writing. He proposed on their second date at Sardi's, and two years later they wed. They remained married for 56 years, until his death in 2020. She worked in advertising throughout the 60's, collaborating on TV commercials with the likes of Jim Henson and Michael Cimino. Between 1968 and 1971, she had three children, then returned to work at the Council of Better Business Bureaus, where she served as the first Director of Children's Advertising Review. Then back to copywriting. She ultimately became a vice-president at Compton Advertising. The Griffins relocated to New Orleans in 1980. At 41, she returned to her love of literature and began writing a spiritual memoir of her conversion to Catholicism. Turning: Reflections on the Experience of Conversion was published by Doubleday in 1980, and well-received. Her second book, Clinging: The Experience of Prayer, brought her attention as an authority on prayer and spirituality. All in all, she authored at least fourteen books, and edited or contributed to many more, often in collaboration with the Chrystostom Society, a Christian literary collective, and Renovaré USA, for whom she also conducted prayer workshops and retreats. She published her final book, Goodbye Birds & Other Poems, in 2014. In 1999, she and her husband moved to Alexandria, LA, where their first grandchildren were born, and remained active in the literary world. In 2016, they moved to Metairie, LA, where they remained. She is survived by her half-brother Charles Dietrich (Cindy); her three children: Lucy Sikes (Gerald Herbert), Henry Griffin (Larisa Gray), and Sarah Thibodeaux (Troy); and her five grandchildren: Ardis, Avery, Houston, William and Naima. A memorial service will be held at Lake Lawn Metairie Funeral Home, 5100 Pontchartrain Boulevard, Metairie, Louisiana on Thursday, October 27, from 4:00-7:00. A full obituary may be found online at https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/new-orleans-la/emilie-griffin-10973397.