I converted to Catholicism and joined the Catholic Church in 1994. I soon became active in the Church, became a Eucharistic minister for many years, and joined the Catholic men’s organization, the Knights of Columbus, in the mid-1990’s. I served as an officer in our Knights Council at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church for several years before being elected as my council’s Grand Knight.
Our council has several fundraising events to raise money for great charitable causes. The most frequent events we perform to raise money for charity are Sunday morning Pancake Breakfasts, Friday night fish fry’s during the Lenten Season and selling tamales prior to the Christmas holidays. Among these activities the most frequent one we conduct is our Pancake breakfasts, where we cook and sell pancake platters and breakfast tacos.
I used to be a volunteer participant in the Pancake breakfast activities but osteoarthritis in my knees and hips eventually led to me having to curb those activities because the pain I had to endure by standing for several hours just got to unbearable. But during those years when I regularly participated in preparing and serving the Pancake Breakfast and helped prepare and roll hundreds of breakfast tacos. Although the KofC is a men’s organization, we had three older women that really enjoyed pitching in and helping the Knights.
I frequently stood side by side with these ladies as we prepared the breakfast tacos. One of them was the mother of a prominent Houston urologist that me and several friends had gone to before. She and I would talk frequently while working together about anything that came to our mind. As various fellow Knights would come through the kitchen they would often ask if I had a new joke, and I would typically always have a Boudreaux joke that I had not told my fellow Knights before. They rarely referred to me by my name Craig, but instead would holler out from one side of the kitchen or another, “Hey Boudreaux! We need another joke.” I would immediately jump into action and deliver another Boudreaux and Thibodeau joke.
It never occurred to me that these three ladies had never heard my real name before. This went on for several years. The lady that was the mother of the urologist was the one I communicated with most, but we never mentioned one another’s name during our conversations. I just always assumed she knew my name was Craig Whitley.
What I didn’t realize for a while was that she participated in some of our Church activities for seniors and had become good friends with my mother-in-law. I knew that she knew my wife, and just never thought about her knowing my mother-in-law. I had known and conversed with this lady for at least 8 or 9 years. The lady had known my wife for years, but I had never discussed my marriage or who I was married to with the lady.
One day after mass the lady saw my wife and I together at the Church and we stopped to talk a while. We had our two daughters with us. My older daughter Marina and I would often work at the Pancake Breakfast together, thus she also knew Marina as my daughter. So this chance meeting at the Church allowed the lady to put two and two together and identify us as a family unit. At the time both of my sons, who were much older, were out of the household and living lives of their own. During that meeting she probably talked more with my wife Jonette than she did with me because they had not seen one another in a while.
The following week the lady attending a senior function at the Church that my mother-in-law attended. She walked up to my mother-in-law and said, “Rose, I had no idea that Jonette was married to Boudreaux until I saw them at the Church together the other day.” Not knowing that all my brother Knights routinely referred to me as Boudreaux, my mother-in-law was oblivious to the meaning of the lady’s statement. She looked at the lady and said, “Jonette isn’t married to anyone named Boudreaux, she’s married to Craig Whitley.” Now both ladies found themselves confused. The lady wanted to defend the honor of Boudreaux and restate that she was certain that she saw Boudreaux with Jonette. Rose wanted to defend the honor of her daughter and emphasize she was not married to a Cajun named Boudreaux. Then when the lady described how I looked, and that I was always telling Boudreaux jokes and my Brother Knights called me Boudreaux, Rose got a big laugh out of the whole matter and proclaimed, “Craig and Boudreaux are the same person!”