Transporting the Eucharist – and herself – to others

The picture of her son Dale rests on the wall of Tessie Trosclair’s home in Norco. Dale was 16 and studying to be a priest at St. Joseph’s Seminary College in 1966. He was the unofficial “fire chief” of the seminary, responsible for driving the fire truck and coordinating any first response to the occasional brushfire.

It was a dry day on Nov. 1, 1966, and some of the underbrush on the seminary grounds had caught fire, so Dale and his seminary crew barreled into action. This time, Dale let a classmate get behind the wheel. Dale was holding onto the side of the truck when a pickup truck coming from the opposite direction got too close.

Dale died instantly in the collision.

“I was numb, I was numb, “ said Trosclair, 91, recalling a mother’s unfathomable pain. “I was so proud. I was going to have a priest. All you can do is say, ‘God give me the strength – give me what I need at this time.’ I’m a daily communicant. God just said, ‘You gave him away, and I’ll take him back. He’s going to be all right.’”

All along River Road, which curves before the unrelenting power of the Mississippi, Trosclair has beaten down a straight-and-narrow path. She got married at 19 in 1942 to Sylvain Pierre Trosclair, and they had a daughter, Brenda, before Sylvain joined the Army and went off to WWII.

Sylvain was a quiet, studious man, and a good provider. Even before they were married, he had built a home for his new bride on family property in Garyville. He helped build the Spillway Bridge on Airline Highway, which opened in 1935, and then figured out another way to make money.

Since workers at the Godchaux sugar refinery needed a way to get to work, Sylvain bought two yellow school buses, and he and his three brothers would ferry workers back and forth from the refinery every day.

“People would gather along the river, and they would stop and pick them up,” Trosclair said. “In those days, people didn’t have automobiles, and they were thrilled to death to catch a ride. Those buses were so crowded they had people standing up in the middle of the aisle.”

Workers would deposit nickels and dimes into a mechanical money machine that made a whirring noise as the coins made their way into the money bag at the bottom. The four Trosclair brothers would take turns as drivers, depending on their shifts at the plant. As a side business, they also picked up people along River Road who wanted to go the movies. Tessie would bring the money bags to the bank.

“It’s like a miracle it all fell in so well,” Trosclair said. “Sylvain saved all the money he made.”

Sylvain insisted that Tessie stay with her parents in White Castle during the war. When he returned in 1945, the train stopped right in front of her parents’ house.

“I knew he was coming,” Tessie said. “I would have died if he had surprised me. He knew better than that. And then we had our second honeymoon. We went to New Orleans. That was big time in those days. You couldn’t go too far. We were lucky we had an automobile.”

A few years later, as workers could afford their own cars, Sylvain sensed the bus transportation business might dwindle, so he sold his four buses and began working at the Shell refinery in Norco, working his way up from the bottom to management. In 1983 – at age 67 – he decided to retire.

“He was signing his retirement papers, and the manager said, ‘S.P., what are you going to do with your free time?’’ Tessie said. “Sylvain said, ‘My wife and I are going to the Holy Land.’ And then he took his glasses off and died. He died in the office signing his retirement papers.”

For the last 35 years – until a broken hip slowed her down – Tessie coordinated the nearly two dozen laypeople who bring Communion to Catholic patients at Touro Infirmary. Twice a week, she made the 52-mile roundtrip from Norco to Touro, where she helped Father Doug Brougher, the Touro chaplain, provide pastoral care to people in some of their most challenging moments.

“It’s the greatest gift of my life,” Tessie said. “When I open that door, I hand everything over to the Lord and ask, ‘Lord, you show me the way.’ My faith took over. I never had a bad patient. Never.”

One time after giving Communion to a patient from Lafayette, he looked a little down and asked if she knew how he could get a haircut.

“I used to teach in a beauty college,” Tessie said with a smile.

She brought her scissors the next day and gave him a haircut, and “we got to be buddies.”

When he heard about the “retirement” party Touro was planning to throw in honor of Tessie’s 35 years of pastoral service, the Lafayette man, who is in a wheelchair, drove four hours in heavy traffic. Touro estimated Tessie had logged enough roundtrip miles to “go around the moon 12 times.”

Reluctantly, Tessie had to surrender the job she loved because she didn’t feel capable of safely driving the long distance. “I prayed to God to not let me drive unless I was able,” Tessie said. “When I turned onto the street, it hit me that if I had to put my brakes on, my cane was in the way. That was the realization. I gave up the car the next day.”

“I would give my eye teeth, had I not fallen, to continue bringing Communion to people at Touro,” Tessie added. “I got more out of it than I gave to any of the patients.”

After Mass at Sacred Heart of Jesus Church recently, a woman approached Tessie.

The woman told her: “Someone said you used to bring Communion to the shut-ins. I would be delighted to do that for you.”

“I had never seen her in my life,” Tessie said. “It turns out she’s from Pennsylvania and she’s retired and she’s a registered nurse.”

Starting next Monday, Tessie, with her angel driver from Pennsylvania, will bring Communion to six elderly couples in Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish.

“I’ve already called all my people and told them I’m coming back,” Tessie said. “I’m just thanking God that I can do it, and that somebody had the heart to offer.”

Every All Saint’s Day – on the anniversary of Dale’s death – Tessie returns to St. Joseph Abbey as the guest of the Benedictine monks. Father Brougher brings her now. They attend Mass at the Abbey church and then eat lunch with the monks.

“It’s the most extraordinary thing in the world,” Tessie said. “They say a Mass for him and I get to eat with all the big monks. I’m the only woman in the big refectory.”

Father Brougher is at her side.

“He’s like my son,” Tessie said. “In fact, I think maybe God sent him into my life, because his mother died a long time ago.”

Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].