Friends disagreed over how Ruth Grace Moulon, better known as "Ruthie the Duck Lady," should live out her twilight years.
This week we celebrate one of the most colorful and fondly remembered Crescent City characters: Ruthie the Duck Girl, who was born 85 years ago this week. A New Orleans native, she was born Ruth Grace Moulon on Jan. 19, 1934. Ruthie is best known for her years walking the streets of the French Quarter, frequently wearing roller skates, a fur coat and a wedding dress, often with a duck or two in tow.
As a child, she and her brother raised ducks in their family’s Royal Street apartment. The ducks would follow young Ruthie everywhere, and her family began promoting her as “the Duck Girl” and charging people to take photos with her, as well as selling picture postcards of her image. Ruthie became a French Quarter fixture from the 1950s through the 1990s and was known for her moodiness, either speaking sweetly to passersby or mightily cursing them. She’d hit up friends and strangers for Budweiser beer (“for her duck”) and Kool cigarettes (“for later”).
The ducks waddling behind her have given way to stuffed versions that Ruthie "the Duck Lady" Moulon clutches wherever she goes. Hailed as one …
"She represents something that's uniquely New Orleans," filmmaker Rick Delaup told Gambit in 2002. "She spent her life drinking for free in the Quarter, bumming cigarettes off people. People took care of her, they fed her, they gave her money by taking pictures of her and if she had lived in any other city, they would probably have locked her away. But that kind of lifestyle is celebrated here, and I think it should be appreciated more, that's for sure." Delaup chronicled her life in a 1999 documentary, “Ruthie the Duck Girl.” She eventually ended up in a nursing home and died in 2008.
This week marks the 85th birthday of Huey "Piano" Smith, a music pioneer from the golden age of New Orleans rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll…
