Walter Carroll Jr.

Walter Carroll, Jr. died in New Orleans on July 14, 2018 in his 95th year. The Carroll family moved to New Orleans from Isle of Wight County, Virginia in the 1840s. A native and lifelong resident of New Orleans, Mr. Carroll was the only son of the late Dorothy Rainold Graner and Walter Carroll. Survivors include his younger sister, Deborah Carroll Conery (Mrs. William Peter Conery, III), and her children, Deborah Ziegler Hopkins (George), Charles William Ziegler, IV (Florence), Leigh Peyton Ziegler and their children. His first wife, Ann Burdette Carroll, died in 1985, and thereafter he married Nancy Jane Nunez Williams Stern, who survives him.

After graduation from the Isidore Newman School, Mr. Carroll entered Tulane University, where he was awarded a bachelor of sciences (B.S.) degree, with a major in physics. His university studies were interrupted by World War II service in the U. S. Naval Air Corps, where he served as a non-commissioned officer in the field of aviation electronics and was attached to the Headquarters Squadron of Fleet Air Wing 5 in the Atlantic Sector, and later to the Headquarters Squadron of Fleet Air Wing 3 in the Panama Canal Zone Sector. After his wartime service he returned to Tulane, entering the College of Law, from which he received the Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree in 1950.

Thereafter he joined his father’s New Orleans law firm which in time became Terriberry, Carroll and Yancey, and where he spent his entire professional career, becoming senior partner. After some forty years of exciting and rewarding practice in the field of admiralty and maritime law in the federal courts, principally involving ship collisions, cargo loss and damage, and personal injury; and frequently involving international clients and foreign litigation, he retired to pursue other interests, in particular additional foreign travel, writing, his several other hobbies, as well as the enjoyment of the company of his family and of his friends.

Mr. Carroll was continuously from 1950 a member of the Louisiana State Bar Association, serving at one time in the association’s House of Delegates, as well as in the administration of the association’s bar admission examination program and on various other association committees. He was president of the New Orleans Bar Association; served on the Tulane Law School’s Dean’s Council, and the Tulane Admiralty Law Institute Planning Committee. He served on the board of The Maritime Law Association of The United States and as its delegate he represented the Association at congresses and at programs of the Comité Maritime International in Stockholm, Tokyo, New York, Aix-en-Provence, Montreal, Hamburg, and elsewhere.

Mr. Carroll took a genuine interest in his native city and in its institutions, serving as president of the Garden District Association, on the boards of the Norwegian Seamen’s Church, the New Orleans Speech and Hearing Center, the Greater New Orleans Tourist & Convention Commission, and in other ways through membership, support, and participation in a number of local civic organizations

Social interests included the presidency of his college fraternity chapter at Tulane, Beta Theta Pi; the presidency of the Louisiana Club (the Louisiana Debating and Literary Association), where he was an Honorary Life Member; Honorary Life Membership in the Boston Club of New Orleans; and membership in the Society of Colonial Wars in Louisiana. He participated over the years as a member or as an officer in thirteen various New Orleans carnival clubs, which participation included occupying the king’s throne as the “Number One” in two uptown, old line, flambeau illuminated, night street carnival parades.

Mr. Carroll took seriously his private social club memberships which afforded him opportunities to enjoy the personal company of many of his male friends and family members. In 1987 he became aware of a broad national effort then underway to impose governmental regulation, control and restraints on such clubs, and he undertook programs to strengthen his own clubs’ legal positions against such threatened interference. As a result, in 1993 when the City of New Orleans commenced a formal investigation of certain local private clubs, working together with a few others, he was able to organize the commencement by the affected clubs of a civil rights suit in Federal Court against the City. This litigation was successful and resulted in a Federal appellate decision which the U. S. Supreme Court refused to disturb, recognizing these clubs’ First Amendment Constitutional right of private association and permanently enjoining the City from enforcing, or attempting to enforce, the offending city ordinance against them: Louisiana Debating and Literary Ass’n. vs. City of New Orleans, 42 F.3d 1483 (5th Cir. 1995).

Additional biographical information about Mr. Carroll in video format can be found at the website of The Louisiana Bar Foundation (http://www.raisingthebar.org/) under “Programs & Projects” and the “Oral History Project List.”

Family and friends are invited to attend a memorial service at Trinity Episcopal Church on Tuesday, July 24th at noon. A gathering will immediately follow at Trinity’s Parish House. A private interment will be conducted at Lake Lawn Cemetery.

Walter Carroll was a lifelong member of Trinity Episcopal Church in New Orleans. In lieu of flowers, a donation to Trinity Episcopal Church or a charity of choice would be appreciated.

To view and sign the guest book, visit www.lakelawnmetairie.com