St. Charles Catholic High mourns a selfless lover

    Mickey Dupont, Marie Ory’s boyfriend, had thought long and hard about pulling off the perfect marriage proposal, and the time had come to launch his ingenious sneak attack.
    Brusly High School, where Mickey had played on the district champion football team in his senior year, was hosting St. Charles Catholic, where Marie was the development director, in a football game on Oct. 24, 2008.
    At halftime, Mickey contrived some excuse to have Marie come down from the bleachers – he needed her to help him with something on the field. As they got to midfield, Mickey stopped Marie in her tracks, got down on his left knee and whipped out a ring.
    Marie buried her face in her hands, started to cry and then shouted, “Yes!”
    It was only then that Marie discovered the elaborate lengths to which Mickey had gone to pull off his shocker.
    “All the cheerleaders held up big signs that said, ‘Yes!’” Doug Triche, assistant principal at St. Charles Catholic, said. Even the photographers were on alert, and the snapshot of The Big Ask was proudly displayed on Marie’s Facebook page.
    But on Oct. 23 – just a day short of three years following Mickey’s romantic marriage proposal – the unspeakable happened. Marie Ory Dupont, age 29 and so full of life and happily married for 20 months, was found dead at home.
    Marie had a standing routine with her mom of attending the 8:30 a.m. Sunday Mass at St. Joan of Arc Church in LaPlace. When she didn’t show up for Mass, her mother, Joan Ory, thought she simply was sleeping in because she was exhausted from chaperoning St. Charles Catholic’s homecoming dance the night before. Ironically, the homecoming football game on Friday night was against Mickey’s alma mater, the Brusly Panthers.
    Mickey was teaching driver’s ed on Sunday morning when he got a call from his mother-in-law that Marie hadn’t shown up for Mass. He headed home, where he found Marie’s body on the floor.
    Sudden death at a such a young age – particularly when it does not involve a car accident – is difficult to explain to teenagers. That’s why Triche, principal Andrew Cupit, the St. Charles Catholic faculty and counselors from several Catholic high schools rallied over the next several days to help students cope.
    On that Sunday, about 80 St. Charles Catholic students were attending World Youth Day at Loyola University when word came to them about Marie’s death. CYO director John Smestad ushered them into a room, where Father Steven Bruno led them in the rosary and then celebrated Mass at Ignatius Chapel.
    “I didn’t think we really could have been part of the closing World Youth Day Mass,” Triche said. “They were grieving. Before we left for Mass, Archbishop Aymond came and spoke with the kids. That was quite a day.”
    Using social media, the school organized a prayer service for Marie that evening at the school. When more than 500 people showed up, it had to be moved to the football stadium. Father Walter Austin offered prayers for the dead, and the field was dark except for a large picture of Marie, bathed in a spotlight.
    Over the next few days, the stories came out. In senior religion class, Nicole Klibert told her classmates she was wearing the blue-plaid school skirt that Marie had passed on after her 2000 graduation from St. Charles Catholic to Lindsey Eichhorn, and which Eichhorn had, in turn, passed on to her.
    “In a way, Marie started the sisterhood of the traveling skirts,” Triche said.
    Passing on her gifts was one of Marie’s trademarks. She was the first faculty member to adopt and find a home for a  litter of puppies that were left at the school door. Students recalled how she was always there with a warm smile or to listen to their concerns.
    Because of her position as development and admissions director, Marie often was the first person the parents of a prospective student would meet when visiting the school. Triche made sure to tell his students during a school rosary that they should model their lives of service on the example Marie gave them each day.
    “I told them that the love that Marie has is the love she always wanted to pass on,” Triche said. “The best way for us to remember Marie is to make sure we pass on the love we have.”
    At the end of Mass, it’s a St. Charles Catholic tradition for one of the seniors to lead a cheer: “Love isn’t love till you give it away – hey!”
    “Marie was the type of person who was always willing to give her love away, even if it was just a smile,” Triche said. “Last year for our summer reading, we read ‘The 17-Second Miracle.’ The whole idea is that it’s not the big things that a person does – it’s the everyday moments, the things you can do in 17 seconds to brighten the day and do something positive for another person.”
    In that way – every day – Marie continued to say, “Yes!”
    Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at pfinney@clarionherald.org.