Pelican Ball Honoree: Janet Begneaud

2024 Pelican Ball Honoree Spotlight, by Ruth Foote

She let him know that his translator told the story funnier than he did. His response? He laughed heartily, and invited them to his summer house. He—he was Fidel Castro. 

He walked in and stood in the back of the room where the Junior League of Lafayette was meeting. He looked as if he had stepped off the pages of Esquire magazine. As president, she asked if they could help him, and when he came forward and told his story, there was not a dry eye in the room. 

She was introduced as royalty to the King and Queen of Malaysia. Her brother told their dinner hosts that his baby sister was also a queen—Queen of the Yambilee. 

There are stories, and then there are stories. Lafayette art patron and connoisseur Janet Begneaud, a self-described storyteller, admits she loves to tell both. But it is the non-fiction ones that are precious, powerful and poignant. These are the ones that she holds close to her heart—embroidered as beautiful memories she cherishes today—two years shy of nine decades. 

Begneaud’s life has been both exciting and rewarding, and definitely, at times, stranger than fiction. Spanning the country, and across international waters, she has had close encounters with royalty, world leaders, television and movie stars, and too many celebrities to count or recall. 

Her whirlwind lifestyle was made possible due to internationally renowned artist Robert Rauschenberg who transcended the art world with his creative, experimental and visionary work. But for Begneaud, he was simply her big brother Bob. 

The siblings were a decade apart. By the time Begneaud was ten, her brother was an adult. But as she grew older, their age gap disintegrated, and they became traveling companions and good friends. 

“I wouldn’t take anything in the world for it because he was just a super, super nice guy, and very sort of protective, you know,” she recalls. “And he was just really, really a sweet guy.” 

But one of her defining moments in life was not during her global treks accompanying her brother to openings of art exhibitions. Instead it came when she was president of the Junior League, and members witnessed the fruits of their labor up close. And in person. Time stood still that day and life came full circle, and standing before them was one of the many beneficiaries whom their volunteer work had impacted—and saved. 

“He said, ‘You know a long time ago, when I was about this tall,’ he said, ‘ I was legally blind,’” she remembers. 

He shared that his parents had already looked into some schooling, which meant he would have to be sent away. But because the League had started special education in the school system, and had even helped to underwrite a teacher’s yearly salary, he was able to stay. The League member, Martha Salmon, who had been instrumental in working with him, was there, and nearly gasped and called out his name.

“He reached out and hugged her,” Begneaud says, “and there was not a dry eye in the place.” 

But due to Junior League, and members translating words into Braille and implementing special education, the young man was able to still play with his neighborhood friends and cousins. He was able to earn a college degree, achieve a job, and have a family. 

Junior League, which sponsors popular Tinsel and Treasures, was also responsible for starting an arts council in Lafayette. According to Begneaud, the organization sent member Sally Herpin, who later served as League president, as well as a founding member of Festival International de Louisiane, on a mission. She left to learn from another Junior League that had an arts council on what steps they had taken so that they could duplicate it in Lafayette. 

The League’s rich history also included recruiting leaders from the community, such as Herbert Heymann and Harold Abdalla, for the arts council. 

“All of these people that had major companies were our board of directors,” Begneaud relays the League’s history, “and they helped us figure out how to do all this.” 

Begneaud also recalls that it was League member Felicia Elsbury, a former president who brought up the idea of the League donating $25,000 for an arts center. That was a large sum of money in the 1960s. But they succeeded in accomplishing the financial feat in three payments, in three different years. 

“And the arts council just became huge, and helped so many in the arts,” Begneaud adds. 

When the siblings visited Cuba, Begneaud remembers they flew on a private plane because the country was off limits, but her brother had three shows there. The evening that they attended a big function, a big dinner, word spread that the country’s Communist leader was coming to the event, and Begneaud wondered to herself how was that going to go. But she found Castro to be “so funny.” And he loved to tell jokes. At one point, she says her brother and Castro were having fun—“kind of cutting up.” 

They quickly learned that even though Castro was the only one in military garb, that did not mean that he did not have protection nearby. 

“And it was funny because he and my brother are talking, they’re standing up talking, and Bob reached out and punched him like in the stomach, you know, making a point,” Begneaud recalls. “And when he did that, about eight men came, and so Fidel just kind of shook them off.” 

While Castro could speak and understand English fluently, he only spoke Spanish in his country, according to Begneaud who enjoyed their conversation about food. She remembers him being very demonstrative, gestures and all, as he spoke, and as his interpreter Carmen translated, Begneaud says that she repeated his gestures but on “a very much smaller scale.” 

When Begneaud addressed the interpreter by her name, they both stopped talking, and she told

Carmen, “You tell the story better than he does.” 

That got a quick response. “He died laughing,” she says. “He reached out and he grabbed me, and he hugged me—he just loved it!” 

Before they knew it, she and her brother were accepting an invitation to the Cuban leader’s summer house. 

Begneaud’s favorite country to visit was Malaysia. For a person who preferred creating elaborate table settings for home dinner parties more than the meal itself, Begneaud immensely enjoyed herself when they ended up dining with the King and Queen, especially given the fact that she had not realized the country even had royalty. At the time, they were part of an entourage of six or seven members who had traveled together to assist in setting up her brother’s two shows. 

“At some point, Bob stood up, he was very, very well spoken, and so he was saying how beautiful the place was, the landscaping and all, very, very nice-looking. And he said, ‘Your queen is beautiful,’ and she was.” 

“But I brought my own queen,” he quickly added, reaching down to pull her up from her seat. “This is my baby sister Janet. She’s the queen of the Yambilee.” 

Later on during the evening, when everybody was milling around, the King came up to her and admitted that he did not quite understand where her brother had said she was queen. 

“I didn’t know what to tell him,” she says. 

After all, being the queen of the Opelousas celebration did not even remotely compare to being a royal queen. It was her brother having playful fun, but afterwards, the two wondered if the King had tried searching for the St. Landry Parish city in an encyclopedia. 

What all of these fascinating—and intriguing—stories have in common is that they fanned the flames of Begneaud’s growing love for the arts, and molded her into becoming the art patron and connoisseur that she is today. Her trips exposed her—literally—to the world of art. And her work, and volunteer work, helped to shape her essence along the way. 

But it was her brother Bob who opened her eyes to the true meaning of art. 

“One of the things that he made me realize—that is not something you learn in books—is that art is art, and it doesn’t have to be with a paintbrush painting a tree,” she says. 

His mud design comes to her mind—the time he created a piece of art that pumped bubbles of some type of mud used, perhaps, on oil wells. 

However, her travel adventures, averaging two to three a year, made one friend question if her husband Byron was aggravated by them. She explained they had an understanding.

“He’s hunting and fishing,” she replied, “and I don’t get upset about that.” 

Begneaud met her husband during the old Lafayette High School era, and they remained sweethearts thereafter. Married to him 65 years when he passed away in 2020, she describes him as an avid hunter and fisherman. Like her father, he was a sportsman’s sportsman. And that was why her husband, a pharmacy co-owner, and her father were such kindred spirits from the moment they met. 

After her husband’s death, it did not take long for their son Rick, the only child, to soon realize that his mother did not belong in San Francisco with him. It was obvious that she had lost her pizzazz since arriving there, and he decided to promptly bring her back to Lafayette, the only hometown she had known since age six. 

Yet her 88 years have kept her humble at heart. She is “very, very proud” of being recognized as the Pelican Ball member emeritus, and considers it as a shared honor with the Junior League for all they have accomplished together. 

As she reflects on her life, Begneaud hopes her truthfulness throughout her decades speaks for itself because she considers it an integral part of her character. 

“I’m real—real into people being themselves,” she says, “and I think that when you are yourself, it is not about—you don’t compare yourself to other people, good or bad, you just—you just do the best you can under any circumstances,” she says. 

“And that was how Bob, my brother, was—you just do the best you can, and that’s super,” she adds, “and most people have a hard time doing that, as a matter of fact.” 

No matter what she encountered, or what she did not know, she never feared anything. Deep inside, she always had the conviction to go forward without hesitation. 

She believes people may be scared to be disliked. “There’s so many opportunities out there that we could find a place for ourselves,” she says. 

“It’s amazing all the things you can do if you just try, but a lot of times people are just afraid of trying,” she says. “But I have never been afraid to try. I don’t think I’m better than anybody else, but I’m just as good as anybody else. I really am.” 

She encourages people to stay busy in life. 

“They need to have something that they love,” she says. “Nearly everybody has something that they really like to do, and you just need to—to expound on that.” 

Her best advice came from her mother. 

“I had the best example of a mom in the world,” Begneaud says. “In fact, she died in my arms,

and I was able to tell her how great it was to be her daughter.” 

“Her advice,” Begneaud adds, “was that first of all, you respect God, and you respect your family, and you respect people around you, and if all that’s put together, it’s a good life.”