Gail played many important roles in her life.  She was a daughter to two people and a wife to two more.  Her three girls knew her as “mom.”  

 

But it was six people that knew her as their sister.  And her relationship with her siblings went far beyond typical sibling bonds.

 

“We relied on each other.”

Her twin brother Gary explains part of the reason why the Fontenelle siblings were so close.  

 

“We had a big family and we were all close to each other and dependent on each other.  With my dad’s

work we knew we’d only be in one place for 2-3 years and we’d be moving again.  The moving around

was NOT easy, and really increased the way we relied on each other.  Gail wanted a deeper relationship

than just a sibling relationship and in my opinion she was truly more than just a sister. We had a lot of

the same friends and we became a confidante in each other’s lives.”  

 

While Gary and Gail clearly had a special bond growing up, what’s remarkable is just how many  of Gail’s siblings felt similarly – that they had a special relationship with Gail that went beyond traditional sibling bonds.  

 

While Gary had experienced his twin sister as a peer, navigating life side-by-side, the younger siblings experienced their older sister as more of a caretaker.

 

“Gail was like a second mom to me,” remembers Charlie. “When I was 5 or 6 years old Gail was a teenager and my mom was called out of the house a lot, with seven kids and always having to run kids here and there. Gail would be the one playing mom and saying ‘what are you doing watching cartoons?’  She’d help me with school work and when she got her driver's license she became the taxi driver.  She was my closest sibling until later on in life.  As a child, I turned to Gail for everything.”

 

                                                             Gail’s brother Johnny was even younger, and also saw Gail as a secondary mom.  “Gail really

                                                             raised me,” Johnny recalls.  “When we moved to Jackson, I was 3. She was 11 years older                                                                         than me.  And mother became pregnant with Rene and … our dad literally had me in her                                                                       room.  So no question she helped raise me.  And when we moved to River Ridge and I was 5                                                               - they put me right across from her. She was like a mother figure.  Or maybe the better way                                                                 to say it is that she was just like the best sister that I’ve ever seen.”  

 

Rene, the youngest of the siblings, and Gail’s only sister, also sees an enormous influence

that Gail had on her childhood.

 

“Gail was my idol when I was a little kid,” shares Rene.  “She treated me like a queen.  She

helped my mom A LOT with me.  She gave me so much attention and she made me feel like it

was always about me.  Like when I was in 3rd grade I got a purple bike with a glitter seat and a flag for Christmas, and on Christmas Day when it was so cold, Gail came outside to teach me how to ride that bike.  My mom always said that

Gail takes care of everybody and she was like the second mom in the house.” 

 

Gail’s brother Steve was Ruth’s fourth child – too young to be Gail’s peer but too old for Gail to have helped take care of him.  Still, he remembers the role she played for his younger siblings. 

 

“When Rene was born in Jackson, Gail tended to Rene quite a lot.  She definitely played a big role when Rene was a baby, more than the other kids. And I remember her in Cleveland playing a pretty big role taking care of Johnny.  She was just real caring and responsible like that.” 

 

“She knew what to say and how to say it.”

As Gail and her siblings grew older, her role as caretaker evolved, but never went away.  As her siblings' struggles went from homework issues or too many cartoons, to more mature and complex life challenges, Gail would play the role of compassionate listener or sage advice giver.

 

Rene remembers leaning on Gail as a young teenager.  “My parents fought a lot and I would call Gail to vent or for help and she would just kind of talk me down.  This would have been about 7th or 8th grade. She was a major confidante for me.  And I would get into trouble for calling her because it was long distance.” 

 

Charlie also remembers Gail as an extraordinary listener, but also someone who “just always

seemed to know the right thing to say and how to say it.”  Even if it was something he wasn’t ready

to hear.  He recalls one pivotal moment when he was a freshman in college.

 

“Gail comes over and tells me that dad is having an affair and that he’s an alcoholic. 

My dad was my hero so I couldn’t and wouldn’t believe it.  And so she got upset and she whipped out this book about alcoholism.  And I said ‘enough.’  She thought it was her mission to inform me about this and then I didn’t see her for a month or two.  So I finally read the book and I have to start admitting to myself that my dad IS an alcoholic and wondering if he was having an affair.  I think it was a burden for Gail and she felt like - at some point - it became her job to tell me.  And she had seen a counselor and was telling me I should see a counselor, because the book said that if your father was an alcoholic that you had a 90 percent chance of becoming one and that’s why she wanted me to read it.  She felt like she had to protect me and look out for me.” 

 

Many of the siblings remember their own “heart to heart” conversations they had with Gail that have stuck with them.  Gail’s brother Steve recalls: 

 

“She told me one time that life is not about everybody else, it’s about what you want to do and decide to do.  Your life is going to go because of what you decide, not everyone else.  And that made a lot of sense to me.  And I believe that whatever happened in my life happened because I brought it upon myself.  But she was very caring in the way she’d say it.”

 

Charlie’s wife Bridget was struck by the dynamic between Gail and her siblings. 

 

“She just knew how to handle her brothers and they were all a pain in the ass and just loud but she was a calming force and more motherly,” remembers Bridget.  “Even with the hard-headed Fontenelles – like Charlie can be hard-headed but she could poke at him in a way that he could handle.  She could say things that other people couldn’t say and people could actually hear it from Gail. She wouldn’t tell you what you were thinking was wrong, she would just give you a way to think of other ideas.  ‘Not to say you’re doing it wrong, but have you ever thought of doing it this way?’”

 

Dropping Everything

Gail’s support went beyond her compassionate listening and loving guidance.  She would show up for her siblings, if and when they needed her.  When Rene was diagnosed with cancer at 27 years old  - right before her wedding - Gail dropped everything to go to MD Anderson Cancer Center and be there for her sister.  

 

“She was very, very present with Rene for as much as she could be,” according to Bridget.  

 

And her siblings would do the same for Gail.  Every time Gail encountered a major crisis in her life, it was her siblings that rallied around her.  

 

When Gail and her first husband Jack started having real problems, they were living in Houston along with Gail’s twin brother Gary.  

 

“In the past she was confident and found ways to just move on,” Gary recalls, “but after years of seeming inseparable, they started to have problems and you could tell it bothered her and she started questioning herself.  She was so confident that I really for the very first time saw that vulnerability in her.  And for the first time I could remember it felt like she became more dependent on me.”

 

When Gail completed her PhD and she and Jack divorced, Gail made the decision to leave Houston with the girls and take her first job in Boulder, Colorado.  This time it was her brother Wayne who came to her side.  Although Wayne passed away in 2008, Charlie remembers this time.

 

“I guess she was juggling a LOT in Houston and things started to break down and then next thing she’s moving to Boulder with just her and Danielle and Lauren,” Charlie remembers.  “And Wayne goes out there and the two of them live together.  Wayne and Gail were REALLY close and Wayne wanted to protect her all the time.  Wayne had just graduated law school in Louisiana and went through all the trouble to take the bar and get licensed in Colorado.”

 

Wayne’s presence in Colorado made an impression on Gail’s young girls.  

 

Danielle remembers her uncle “asking us if he should fart inside of the car or outside of the car.”

 

Lauren, just a toddler, remembers Wayne drinking milk out of the carton with the refrigerator door open. “I tattled on him to my mom and said, ‘Mom - Uncle Wayne drinks straight from the carton!’ And I remember her saying, ‘Oh, that’s because he’s a bachelor honey.’”

 

Wayne and Gail had a special bond.  Eventually, Wayne and his wife Chloe would choose Gail to be the guardians of their daughters Chloe and Claire if anything should happen to them.    

 

After Gail had settled in Boulder, she was soon making a new and dramatic transition – moving to Alaska with her boyfriend, Chris Nettles.  But within two years that relationship would fall apart and Gail would find herself in another precarious situation, needing to make a quick move and then reestablish her career.  This would be Jack’s chance to step in and get Lauren and Danielle back (for what ended up being two years).

 

                                                       “So Jack was going to get the girls,” Rene recalls, “but someone needed to go with them from Alaska to

                                                        Houston.  So (our brother) Johnny flew out there to escort Lauren and Danielle.  Anybody would do

                                                        anything Gail asked.”

 

                                                        Back in Colorado, Gail got her career back on track – and met her future husband – at US West in

                                                        Denver.  While Mark Glesner also worked at US West, he met Gail at the Denver Fair, where they both had come to see a mutual co-worker perform in a band.  After two years they were married, and Gail was pregnant with her third daughter Helen.  

 

Gail continued to be close with her siblings throughout her time in Denver, making regular trips back to New Orleans with Mark and Helen, as well as hosting family in Colorado.  Her devotion to her siblings was ever apparent, as when Rene gave birth to her daughter Emily.

 

“Gail came and spent two weeks with me when Emily was born and would get up in the middle of the night.,” remembers Rene.  “And I was shocked because she was a HARD sleeper.  I mean, she loved her some sleep. And it was all her idea.  She left Helen with Mark the whole time.”

 

Trouble in Denver

For ten years, things had been coming together for Gail in Denver.  Then disaster struck. 

 

In 2000, Gail went into the hospital to have a hysterectomy performed.  During the procedure, doctors attempted to scrape the scar tissue off of her colon that had developed from her endometriosis.  Almost immediately after getting home from the hospital Gail developed a fever that rose throughout the night.  She was taken back to the emergency room and doctors discovered that she had developed sepsis after her colon was nicked in the procedure.  As her situation worsened, she was given a breathing tube and entered a medically induced coma.  Doctors gave her a 50 percent chance of coming out of that coma.

 

Initially, her siblings were told to stay away, as Mark wanted to maintain a sense of normalcy

for the kids, and shield them from how dire the situation was.  

“It was terrifying,” remembers Bridget.  “And I remember kneeling in our bathroom and I did

a nine-hour novena prayer for her.  And Charlie went up there even though Mark didn’t want

anyone up there.”

 

“I went out there and went straight to the hospital and I was actually the one standing there when she woke

up,” Charlie remembers.  “And they took her off the drip and she just looked at me and said, ‘What are you

doing here?’”  

 

Bridget recalls conversations with Gail afterwards about her time in the coma.  “And she told me ‘It felt like

I was in a well and I was naked and I could hear people praying all around me and all I could think to myself

was ‘How am I going to get out of here?  I need to get out of here.’”  

 

Gail had a long road to recovery, including intense physical therapy to gain back basic strength and re-learn how to walk.  

 

“But she came back and we had a wonderful time at Wayne’s wedding in California,” Bridget recalls. “And she even went on the hike.”  

But eventually things started to unravel for Gail in Denver.  

 

Gary remembers the early signs that something was amiss.  “I look back and can think of times that she was supposed to come up to meet us at a ski resort and she’d call and say something came up and couldn’t come that day.” 

 

When Gail came to New Orleans for Christmas in 2006, Mark wasn’t with her, and she opened up to her sister Rene.

 

“She confided in me when he became addicted to drugs,” Rene recalls.  “She came down for Christmas in 2006 and Mark wasn’t here because he had just gone to rehab for the first time.  She didn’t want to tell people but I told her there was no hiding it.  So she met up with Wayne, Johnny, and Charlie after their golf game to tell them.”

 

Charlie remembers that lunch well. 

 

“One Christmas she finally has lunch with us and tells us that she is going to get a divorce because Mark was on drugs.  From lunch on, Wayne wanted to do the divorce because he had a Colorado law license.  But Gail’s good friend talked him into letting a local lawyer do it. Wayne was adamant that this drug was going to destroy Mark’s life.  Gary and I were sort of soft-selling Gail but Wayne was different, just absolutely adamant.”

 

                                                        Johnny remembers the moment Wayne tried to step in and extricate Gail from the situation.                                                              “Wayne  called to say ‘Hey - we’re flying out Friday to get Gail and bring her back down.’  And it                                                           was a Wednesday.  But it was never a question of ‘if’ when Gail needed help. There was no way                                                           we were going to say no. But it didn’t happen.  Whatever problems there were subsided.”

 

                                                        Shockingly and tragically, Wayne would die of a heart attack shortly after.  “The whole thing                                                              turned into a mess, with the first attempt at divorce failing,” recalls Charlie. “If Wayne had been

                                                        alive, I just don’t think it would have played out that way.” 

 

For half a dozen years, Mark went in and out of rehab while Gail tried her best to make things work – sometimes to the frustration of her worried family.  Again, Charlie recalls: 

 

“She was fighting whether she should get a divorce or not get a divorce and I would call her and she’d just be crying and she said ‘you don’t know what it’s like to see the death of a marriage’… it was something that was just unbelievably hard for her.”

 

Full Circle

Finally, several of Gail’s siblings went to Denver to see the Saints play the Broncos, and realized how bad the situation had gotten for Gail - not just with Mark but a troubling cognitive decline was becoming more evident.

 

As Bridget recalls, “We had started to see the memory stuff because she would call to say happy birthday on the wrong day and stuff like that.  And when we went up to Denver for the game we realized Mark had a big problem and Gail was a wreck and saw lots of notes she was leaving for herself … sticky notes all over the refrigerator.  It was a very weird trip and we started realizing there was a lot more going on than we had realized.”

 

Gary had his own shocking experience when he came by the house and saw “a pile of mail that was two feet tall with IRS notices, and Tax Liens.  We realized how bad it was and Charlie got more involved.”

 

Bridget remembers that “somehow Charlie convinced Gail that she did NEED to go down to New Orleans.  She had come down for Christmas and that’s when they left Helen down here and Charlie went back up with her to help Gail sell the house.  Basically they did an intervention and she finally succumbed to their recommendation for her coming back.”

 

Growing up, Gail had taken care of her siblings when they were too small to take care of themselves.  Now Gail was in a desperate situation and losing her own ability to take care of herself.  The tables were about to turn.  Mark remembers this wrenching time.  

 

“And as her mental decline got worse, her family just came and took her away, and that was probably the best thing.  And it totally crushed me but I had crushed her.  Her family loved her so much and they came and took her into a new situation in New Orleans.  They loved her so much and they tried to help her the best way they knew.”

 

Gail had begun her life in New Orleans, and now she was returning, for what would turn out to be her final years.  Charlie rented a house for Gail near the rest of the family and Bridget would become her primary support person.   

 

“Everyone wanted to give me the credit,” Charlie reflects, “but I want to believe that my siblings would do the same thing for me.  And I KNOW Gail would have.”