Michael McGrath Duran

Thrise happy man the knight himselfe did hold,

Possessed of his Ladies hart and hand,

And ever, when his eye did her behold,

His heart did seeme to melt in pleasures manifold.

Edmund Spenser, The Fairie Queen

Book I, Canto XII, Stanza 40

Michael McGrath Duran, Sr., a sinner, lover, and wordsmith, went out with the tide on September 5, 2022 at 9:00 p.m. with friends and family raising their cups to his new beginning. Mike was born on his father’s (Richard George Duran, Sr.’s, d. 1973) birthday, November 25, in 1949. He was also predeceased by his mother Grace Werling Duran and his brother Richard George Duran, Jr. Born in New Orleans, he grew up in Carrollton, where he played center field for a handful of NORD city championship teams in the late 1950’s/early 1960’s. He was an honors graduate of Jesuit High School (1967) and attended the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD, appointed there by U.S. Representative Hale Boggs. He graduated from the University of New Orleans (B.A. English 1971) and earned his Masters of Arts in English from the University of Maine at Orono. He earned an Associate’s degree in Criminal Justice from Delgado Community College and a Juris Doctor degree from Loyola University, where he was Articles Editor of the Law Review.

He taught English Composition at the University of Maine. He was the bike delivery boy for L&L Fine Foods (Latuso’s) on Sycamore and pumped gas and fixed tires at Rockery Shell on Robert E. Lee. He fronted/sang for the band Shuga that worked country bars in Maine for a spell. He bussed and later waited tables at Brennan’s, Turci’s, Lautrec’s, and Pique’s Wharf. He was also a marine propeller machinist at Cornay’s across from the old Barq’s brewery, which led him to being an Enforcement Agent with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. There he was assigned to the Patrol Boat Widgeon on Lake Pontchartrain, and then as a game warden in Jefferson Parish. He was valedictorian and elected president of his law enforcement training class at LSU (1981). He became the lieutenant in charge of Jefferson Parish and was named Agent of the Year in 1982. He was featured in a cover story in the Times-Picayune’s Dixie Magazine on south Louisiana game wardens. He was a P.O.S.T./FBI certified police defensive tactics instructor and published articles in local and national police journals on wildlife officer survival.

After getting his law degree he became an associate then partner at the New Orleans law firm of Adams & Reese, where he was on the trial team that successfully defended the New Orleans Fire Department against a $60 million claim for negligent handling of the American Standard porcelain factory fire on Franklin Avenue and the Lakefront in 1980. In addition to handling the occasional defense of wildlife charges, he managed the electrical engineering component of Shell Oil Company’s defense of litigation stemming from the Norco Refinery cat-cracker explosion in the late 1980’s. In the course of his labor and employment practice he litigated former TV-news anchor Lynn Gansar’s claim of discrimination against WDSU and its then-owner Pulitzer Corporation. He left Adams & Reese to become head of labor and employment litigation at the New Orleans law firm of Milling, Benson, Woodward, where he successfully defended clients such as Bally’s Casino, TMSEL, the Orleans Parish School Board, and the Kansas City Railway Company from claims of employment discrimination/harassment. In 2005, only months before Hurricane Katrina, he became managing partner of the New Orleans office of the Lafayette law firm Oats & Hudson. While there he successfully defended the Louisiana DOTD from claims that it intentionally fouled up assisted evacuation post Katrina for racial purposes. He published several articles on labor and employment issues, emphasizing fairness as the key to workplace peace. He was on the editorial board of the American Bar Association treatise The Railway Labor Act (2d ed.).

Mike served as a board member and three consecutive terms as President of the Board of Directors of Ronald McDonald House Charities of Greater New Orleans, and was on the board of Rayne United Methodist Church’s Early Childhood Development Program. He was active with the Delta Chapter of the Coastal Conservation Association. In later years he served with STAIR (Start the Adventure in Reading) as volunteer tutor to minority and Islamic second-graders having trouble with reading and writing English.

Mike never allowed his professional life to interfere with his calling to stop and smell every rose in his path: he motorcycled to Los Angeles, thereafter flew to Seoul and Barcelona, and later drove to Atlanta to see summer Olympic games, the latter two with his boys Chance and Soren. He taught his kids to hunt and fish and took them to games all over. He also took them to Yosemite, and along with their younger brother Michael Jr. to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, the Smokies, the Adirondacks, and the Catskills, where they hiked to the ruins of Sleepy Hollow. He and Mike Jr. canoed the Rio Grande and slept alone at the peak of the escarpment overlooking the Big Bend. He was most at peace in the wild, and finally found his perfect running mate in his wife Judy, who trekked with him to Yankee Stadium or hiked with him to the backcountry of Yosemite or the Smokies, Acadia, or the Lake Country of Wordsworth or the Yeats country of Ireland—all with equal enthusiasm and joy.

He published poetry at age 15 and never stopped writing: journals, poetry (including the songs performed and sung by him as Kirk Castle in/and the Swingin Doors), fiction (novels Visitors, The Mouth of the River, The Word Before Babel, STIGMA: The Rape of Faith, and a handful of short stories), opinion pieces (many published in the Times-Picayune and the New Orleans Advocate) and essays (Calling a Spade: Thoughts on Race, The Father in Words), biography (Selective Memory, Maternal Preference), and Christian commentaries, many of which works are available through his website castlechurchdoor.com, which is itself the platform for his No Saints Almanac: New Daily Bible Meditations for the New Christian.

Survivors include his “Ladie” Judith Rebecca Duran (nee Braswell) and his four sons, Chance Farrow Duran, Soren Reed Duran, Michael McGrath Duran, Jr., and his stepson Nicholas Comardelle, along with his stepdaughter Natalie Comardelle, all of whom were his eternal pride and joy; his brother Richard’s daughters Christine and Melissa; cousin Elaine “Noonie” Rellihan (nee Hodgson) and her beautiful family. And his handful of still soul brothers. And the ones who appreciated his kindness, his huge, primitive ego notwithstanding. You know who you are. Honorary pallbearers are Joey Montgomery, Tommy Sancton, Sandy Dares, Michael Kuzma, Rodi Culotta, and Michael Barnes.

Private services were held. A Celebration of Life will be held at a later date.