Ruthie the Duck Girl dies of cancer at 74
08:15 PM CDT on Saturday, September 13, 2008
Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS -- Ruthie the Duck Girl -- a holdover from a time colorful characters were as much a part of everyday life in the French Quarter as beignets and cafe au lait -- has died of cancer at 74.
Ruthie, whose real name was Ruth Grace Moulon, was a French Quarter eccentric who zoomed from bar to bar on roller skates, often wearing a ratty fur coat or wedding gown and trailed by a string of her beloved ducks, died Sept. 6 at Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge, where she was evacuated for Hurricane Gustav.
She had been suffering from cancer of the mouth and lungs, said Carol Cunningham, a close friend who watched over her for nearly 40 years.
"I've always looked at Ruthie like a little bird with a broken wing, " Cunningham said. "She was always so dear to me."
Moulon, a lifelong New Orleanian, became a French Quarter fixture, achieving legendary status in a city that treasures people who live outside the mainstream. Along the way, she acquired a coterie of people like Cunningham who found places for her to live, paid her bills and made sure she got home at night.
A tiny woman with a constant grin, Moulon frequently sported abridal gown and veil on her forays because, people said, she considered herself engaged to a man she met in New Orleans in 1963 when he was a sailor. But when asked about marriage, she always answered: "I got engaged; that's enough!"
Moulon's daily routine consisted of roaming from one bar to another, mooching drinks and cigarettes. She could be sweet one minute and unleash a torrent of profanity the next.
Miss Moulon's mother, who put her daughter's hair in sausage curls to make her look like Shirley Temple, came up with the idea that little Ruthie should be a duck girl, Cunningham said.
"She dressed her in evening dresses and bought her skates, and she skated through the Quarter with these little ducks following, " Cunningham said.
Moulon's mother, who grew up in rural Louisiana, initially let the ducks live in the house, although the two women sometimes fought over them.
According to legend, problems arose when Ruthie's mother wanted to oust the ducks from the bathtub so she could bathe and Ruthie didn't want her to, fearing it would upset the ducks.
In the documentary, artist George Dureau recalled a conversation with Moulon after the death of another French Quarter character, Eloise Lopez Arollo Samakintos, who always carried a cross through the Vieux Carre.
"There ain't a whole lot of us left, George," she said.
A Mass will be said Monday at noon Jacob Schoen & Son Funeral Home confirmed on Saturday. Burial will be in Greenwood Cemetery.
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved
