"He lived in San Francisco in the Bay Area. And I was about 4 years old, and he gave me a ride in that, and that really impressed me. "My earliest memory is visiting family and he came by with his then-partner, and he was driving this red MG car and it was so neat. It's got a cycle and a fence around it and a locked gate." Skip and Marilyn walking through the potter's field where Ferris is buried. There's nothing there that would indicate that this is a cemetery. And basically, it looks like a cow pasture. Their maps only go up to P, and he's in Q32 from what Resthaven has told us, and it's still unmarked. "Unfortunately, since Katrina, the coroner's office, as well as the Resthaven Cemetery where he's at, have no more maps to show that area. So, he was buried in a potter's field in an unmarked grave with three unidentified victims of the fire at the same time, and it's still unmarked. So, since the body wasn't claimed, even though the local church, the in New Orleans, wanted to bury him properly, law wouldn't allow it. I knew who he is and that ring.' Because a lot of the bodies, I guess, were beyond any kind of identification.
And this person apparently contacted the officials and said, 'Yeah, that is Ferris LeBlanc. Somebody who knew him from his time there recognized him by a ring that he wore. "His body was identified anonymously after the fire, and nobody in the family was ever contacted and we never knew. On how Ferris' body wound up in an unmarked grave even though his body was identified anonymously I reached out to that filmmaker, and there was one that was filming still, so I just contacted everybody and told them who I was and there'd been a big mystery about Ferris' family, and they were all pretty surprised and kind of in a way excited to find out that we did exist and that we wanted to find him." There had been a documentary already done in like 2013 I think, so I reached out to that filmmaker, and there was one in process that was just about finished. "Well, on the internet search, I found out that there were a couple of books written about the fire. On how Bailey and his family began the search for Ferris' remains I said, 'We know now what's happened.' And we just broke down, and then I said, 'You know what we have to do, we have to find him and we have to bring him home.' That's what our goal is." I found it on the computer, and in tears, I went into the other room and told my mom. But by the same token, it was so horrible to be burned alive. Knowing what happened, it was good to know that we finally found out. "We'd always wondered what happened to him.
"My mom came to stay with me around Christmas that night in 2015 to hang out for my birthday, and she had heard from one other brother that there was something on the internet about Ferris, so she asked me to look him up, and I did a Google search on his name, and my computer lit up with all of the horrible facts of the upstairs lounge fire and his death. On how Bailey and his family found out Ferris was one of the victims of the arson attack Ferris LeBlanc in the late 1960s. Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson talks with Skip Bailey, Ferris' nephew, about those efforts. Now, LeBlanc and her family are trying to bring Ferris' remains home. Thirty-two people died in the fire, but many families didn't come forward to claim the bodies of the dead and churches refused to hold funerals for some of the victims.įor 42 years, Marilyn LeBlanc didn't even know her brother Ferris had died in the fire - until a Google search showed his name on a list of victims. history was a 1973 arson attack at a New Orleans gay bar called the UpStairs Lounge. Until the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016, the deadliest known attack at a gay club in U.S. (Jack Thornell/AP) This article is more than 3 years old.
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Most of the victims were found near the windows in the background. A view inside the UpStairs Lounge following an arson on June 25, 1973.