Edell G. Welch

Jeanerette—A Memorial Service for Edell Welch will be held Saturday, February 15, 2020, at 11 a.m. at David’s Funeral Home Chapel in Jeanerette.

Visitation will begin Saturday, February 15, 2020, at 8:00 a.m. until service time at 11:00 a.m.

Edell Welch of Lafayette, 82, passed away on Tuesday, February 11, 2020. Graveside services will immediately follow in St. John’s Cemetery.

Edell Welch was born Edell Julia Gerhart on November 6, 1937, in New Orleans, along with her twin brother, Wardell. She grew up on their grandparents’ dairy farm in Belle Place, on the edge of New Iberia. In fact, her personality was likely influenced by proximity to the gentle sweetness of her beloved grandmother Alice. One of most of her treasured possessions was Alice’s kitchen table, which had rounded corners because her grandfather sawed them off one day after her hearing Alice complain about repeatedly bruising her hip on the table corners. Edell loved to lift the tablecloth to show the rounded corners and share that story with younger family members over coffee that she served in china cups and saucers.

As a 1956 graduate of Mt. Carmel in New Iberia, Edell maintained lifelong friendships with her classmates. They were a small and intimate group, and for many decades she joined them for an annual reunion luncheon.

After watching her mother serve as Iberia Parish’s public health nurse during WWII, Edell followed in her mother’s footsteps to attend nursing school at what was then called the Southwestern Louisiana Institute in Lafayette. The majority of her nursing career was spent as a home health nurse, providing care for a boy in Abbeville whose brain injury had left him nonverbal and paralyzed but mentally alert. Edell at one point gave her son the book “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” to help explain the plight of her patient, who she grew to love after decades of providing not only nursing care but also a kind connection to the outside world. She read to him and patiently held a decades-long ongoing conversation with him, which he would participate in by blinking his eyes to indicate words and letters. That he was able to converse with her this way was a testament to her loving patience.

Soft-spoken and gentle of heart, she was described by some family members as the ideal of Southern womanhood. In the prime of her life, she loved entertaining and was known to go over the top in decorating for and planning her family’s Christmas holiday celebrations. She also modeled generosity of spirit, eschewed gossip, and her children say that even in private moments, they never heard her speak ill of others. In fact, she modeled acceptance and compassion toward others across her life.

She treasured her extended family and often spent weekends visiting aunts, uncles, and cousins in New Iberia and her mother-in-law in Jeanerette. She adored poetry, especially the works of Wordsworth and Longfellow. In fact, her closest friend, Tralise Morein, visited Edell weekly in the last two years of her life to read her poetry at Pelican Pointe Healthcare and Rehabilitation center in Maurice. The family would like to thank Mrs. Morein, who Edell met in nursing school, for being stellar support to the family and a loving, loyal friend to their mother over the decades.

She is survived by four of her children: Courtney Fitch of Lafayette, Huey Fitch of Houston, and Angelle Fitch of Lafayette—whom she had with first husband Huey Fitch, Sr.—and Walter Welch of Arnaudville. She is also survived by her five grandchildren: Jason Fitch, Ashley Fitch, Emily Trahan, Grace Fitch, and Hunter Fitch.

She is preceded in death by her father, Wardell X. Gerhart, Sr., who died over the Mediterranean in the North African campaign early in WWII; her mother, Remas Dupuy (Gerhart) Finch; her second husband, Dr. Dean Welch; her twin brother, Wardell X. Gerhart, Jr., and her son Eugene Fitch.

She will be to rest in St. John’s Cemetery in Jeanerette with her husband Dean Welch, who died in 1977.

You may sign the guest register book and/or send condolences at www.davidfuneralhome.org

David Funeral Home of Jeanerette, 400 Provost Street, 337-276-5151 is handling arrangements