Former first gentleman and the husband of former governor Kathleen Blanco, Raymond “Coach” Blanco, has passed away at the age of 87. Coach Blanco was the vice president of student affairs at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette for decades. Current school president, Doctor Joe Savoie, said Coach felt it was his moral obligation to listen to students.
“It was about being sensitive to students, about being focused on individual students, about respecting student opinion, and I think it created a culture here that certainly exists today.”
Coach Blanco served as the school’s vice president of student affairs from 1974 to 2009. Savoie said there are hundreds of stories about his larger-than-life exuberance.
“If we started with maybe ten of his friends it might take us a week to get through half the stories that we remember, and we’d be laughing the whole time. He was quite a unique individual.”
Raymond Blanco joined the football coaching staff in 1963 and then entered university administration in 1969. Savoie said Coach Blanco hired him in 1978 at the university after the two got to know each other while he was a student and a fraternity president.
“I had lots of talks with him as a student and got a good sense of him, and then when I finished he asked me to come oversee fraternities and student organizations.”
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