Cecil J. Picard - Last Rites

Last Rites

Services for Picard were held in St. Alphonsus Catholic Church in Maurice and were broadcast on a television hookup from a nearby school to handle the overflow of mourners. Entombment was in the church mausoleum. The St. Alphonsus pastor, the Reverend O. Joseph Breaux, said that Picard's life was best portrayed in a photograph of the superintendent published on the front page of the Lafayette Daily Advertiser the day after his death. It shows Picard seated in a classroom surrounded by children, "as it must have been when Jesus gathered the little children around him. He taught as Jesus taught."

Picard and his wife, the former Gaylen David, had two sons and four grandchildren. Tyron and Layne Picard said in a statement distributed at the funeral that their father's life "can be summed up in one sentence: He taught us to believe. As a father, he taught us to believe success was possible. Not a single day did he bemoan his undeserved fate. Quite the contrary, he accepted his condition with peace and deepened his relationship with God."