Our late, great Antoinette Dorsey K-doe, Empress of NOMC Musician Patient Outreach with R&B legend, Ernie K-doe, her late husband known as the EMPEROR OF THE UNIVERSE.
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Ode to An Empress
As the local school bands marched under the oak lined streets during the two weeks of Carnival season, I reflected on the glorious “bent, not broken” resilience and power of New Orleans’ music. When the floods of 2005 shattered the flimsy administrative infrastructure of the city, it is our music that held us together. As I like to say, we New Orleans’ musician advocates truly put the CULT back in culture!
Then before dawn on Mardi Gras morning a text message pinged on my iPhone:
“ A K-doe heart attack DEAD.” I was stunned, disbelieving, and certain that this could not be true. It took a few hours to have this confirmed, Antoinette who had served as the “Empress” of NOMC Musician Outreach since our founding had passed at the age of 66. I will never forget the first time I met her. The NOMC had just opened downtown at the LSU Health Care Network, a bustling professional medical building. It was 9 AM; the waiting rooms of all the other LSU HN clinics in the building were packed with sick folks. The elevator doors opened to reveal Ernie and Antoinette K-doe, resplendent in matching lavish purple satin and rhinestone suits. Antoinette suspected that Ernie was ill, but she also knew he stubbornly refused to go to the doctor. Ernie proudly told everyone that he was a Charity Hospital baby. Like so many of his generation he believed that his only health care option was an ambulance ride to the Charity Emergency Room.
Antoinette cooked up a plan to change all this. She told Ernie that the NOMC was holding a press conference and wanted him to be our spokesman to encourage all the musicians in town to stay healthy. Ernie the master showman and self- appointed Emperor of the Universe rose to the occasion! A couple of real reporters and a few “pretend” reporters paid homage in a way that Ernie felt compelled to show the world how painless it was to get a check-up at the NOMC.
Believe me, the LSU staff who strictly follow HIPPA patient confidentiality guidelines were mighty perplexed when Ernie emerged after a one hour appointment to announce to everyone on the 8th floor that he didn’t have AIDS, he just had cirrhosis! After the diagnosis, Antoinette kept Ernie on the straight and narrow. Bringing him in on a regular basis for more NOMC “press conferences”.
Then on Carnival morning I realized that never again would I be able to call Antoinette for sage advice as to how to serve musicians most effectively. I would never again hear that, “ Hello, Bethany, my baby what do you need?” Never again would Antoinette round up the Baby-Dolls (her social aid and pleasure club) to clean the house of a sick musician, or go to the grocery to fill a musicians’ home with healthy foods before he was discharged from the hospital, or pay a visit to a musician’s momma’s to “explain” the benefits of the NOMC and the outcome if he didn’t come in immediately. Each time a musician she knew died, Antoinette would come over to cut ginger in my garden to concoct huge arrangements befitting their stature. There was no NOMC event too large for her to offer to cook up a pot of red beans so that we didn’t have to “waste money” on store bought food. She ran Ernie (who died in 2001) for mayor in 2006, donating all his campaign contributions to our new foundation, NOMAF. Antoinette would zero-in on a potential NOMAF donor at some event, coax them into her hearse (yes, she drove a hearse), appearing with them at my doorstep; refusing to take them away until they wrote us a check. Yet, while Antoinette K-Doe showered care on everyone whose shadow crossed her path, she ignored her own health, which literally proved to be a heart breaker.
At Antoinette’s funeral at the St. James Methodist Church of Louisiana, Rev. Joseph A. Tilley extolled the overflowing crowd of mourners not to grieve her loss but celebrate all she did to lift others up. Most of all, Rev. Tilley deputized each of us to be a little bit more like Antoinette.
So in the spirit of my beloved friend, Antoinette K-Doe, I say to each of you: You are important. We need you. Please take good care of yourself!