Camille Gravel - Death and Family

Death and Family

Gravel's parents werer Camille Francis Gravel, Sr., and the former Aline Delvaille. Two days before Christmas in 2005, Gravel died at Naomi Heights Nursing Home in Alexandria, where he had been residing for several months. He had undergone heart valve replacement surgery eleven months earlier at St. Frances Cabrini Hospital in Alexandria. The surgery left him in a coma. Soon his kidneys began to malfunction, and doctors performed a second surgery to determine the reasons for renal failure. In this surgery, doctors removed a blood clot. and determined that he had also suffered a stroke.

Gravel's funeral mass was conducted on December 27, 2005, at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral in downtown Alexandria.

On November 26, 1939, Gravel wed the former Katherine David, who died in 1979. The couple had eleven children, eight of whom were living as of January 2012: Grady David Gravel of Lafayette, Mark Alan Gravel of Alexandria, and Charles Gregory Gravel and his wife, Elycia, of Alexandria; Ann G. Vanderslice and her husband, Stephen J. Vanderslice of Alexandria; Eileen G. Cappel and her husband, Richard B, Cappel, of Lake Charles; Martha G. Antoon and her husband, attorney Thomas A. Antoon of Alexandria; Virginia G. Carbo of Alexandria, and Margaret Lynn Gravel of Alexandria. The three deceased children were Richard Alvin Gravel, Camille F. Gravel, III, and Eunice Holloman Gravel.

Gravel's second wife, whom he married in 1980, was the former Evelyn Gianfala (1922-2012), a native of Berwick in St. Mary Parish, who was the president of Gianfala & Son Oil Field Construction Company. She was also a former chairman of the Louisiana State Board of Tax Appeals and a one-time legislative assistant to State Senators William Cleveland and Jamar Adcock of Monroe. Evelyn Gravel was a supporter of live theatre, having served on the boards of the Little Theatres of Alexandria and Crowley and the Swine Palace Theatre in Baton Rouge.