From 1979 to 1983, before I forsook my Cajun heritage for life amongst the Yankees, I was employed by the alleged Iler Pope at her first attempt at a tea-room cum curio shop which evolved into "Dante-by-the-River Restaurant." Iler was an authentic N'awluns character: think of a Tennessee Williams heroine or better yet, imagine Tallulah Bankhead mated with with Popeye the Sailor. She was sarcastic, scrappy, irritable, irritating and sometimes just plain nutty. But she was also chawmin', funny, perceptive and sometimes just plain butch. She subsisted on Marlboro Menthols, iced tea and stories of her upbringing in Drew, Mississsippi (liberally embellished with convenient plagirism from Eudory Welty). At her most infuriating, there was something frail and vulerable about her which demanded your protection. Her passing marks the loss of another of the rapidly disappearing New Orleans institutions of idiosyncratic, faded grandeur—vexing, ineffable and unforgettable.
She fancied herself a restaurateuse on the order of Ella Brennan of Commander's Palace, the Queen of New Orleans Cuisine, but she lacked the family bankroll that floated Ella (for whom I also worked), and she didn't share Ella's capacity for long hours and hard work. In her dealings with others—staff, family and paramours—Iler could be spoiled and manipulative, fierce and withering, critical and demanding. As with her paragon, Ella, her saving grace was a knack for surrounding herself with talented people, surely a talent in itself.
The estimable Richard Hughes of The Pelican Club is the most notable of her protege, but Iler always employed a cast of talented and/or interesting characters. Even the names of the legion of cooks, managers, and servers evoke ghosts of Southern literature: Beth Brown, Patti Earth (who remembers her real name?), Duncan Green, Steve Huber, Dewey Linder, Mark Sparks. Some of the more idiosyncratic characters even merited nickames: "Creepin' Jesus," "Little Dick," "Cathy Bidet" (whose famous tits were the model for the mermaids at the New Orleans 1984 World's Fair) and "Arlena a Co-Ca" to name a few. Along with your humble narrator, these many others in Iler's employ came and went on the tides of fortune and Iler's favor.
As the obituary says, "Although she was a tough boss, her staffs loved her -- and valued their time in her restaurants."
Uh-huh.
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