Notable New Orleanians: A Tricentennial Tribute

Nash Roberts.
COURTESY OF WWL-TV.
low air pressure. During hurricane seasons, New
Orleanians huddled about these twelve to fifteen-inch
inch screens to hang on Roberts’ every word. At the
time, his principal technology was the precision
barometer, although the National Weather Service’s
use of radar and computers was in sight.
After years at WDSU, Roberts joined WVUE where
personable and outspoken meteorologist Bob Breck
would later replace him. Nash concluded his career at
WWL with his final triumph, a 1998 prediction that
Hurricane Georges would hit to the east of New
Orleans when all the scientific instruments predicted
the west. “As long as Roberts and his Magic Markers
are exclusive to WWL,” The Times-Picayune wrote
after Georges, “Channel 4 will remain the only place
to get an answer to the first hurricane-related question
asked by anyone who’s lived in New Orleans for any
length of time: ‘What’s Nash say?’” Despite the decades that have passed since his on-air warnings,
Nash remains a local icon. His television appearances have been absent since 1998, so long that his
successor Breck has also retired, yet Nash has not been forgotten. As Breck noted, “I think Nash
wasn’t afraid to fail. He trusted his instincts and he just followed his gut. I think that’s what people
remember him for.” 1
1 Obituary by Stephanie Stokes in Times-Picayune, December 20, 2010.
M URIEL B ULTMAN F RANCIS
(1919-1986)
Muriel Bultman Francis, connoisseur and patron of music and the arts, generously supported
the musical and contemporary art scene and the New Orleans Museum of Art. The daughter of
Fred Bultman, the last of the Bultman Funeral home family to operate that family institution, Mrs.
Francis purchased her first work of art at the age of eighteen, At that time she astutely bought
Claude Monet’s “Chrysanthemums” and an Odilon Redon painting, both for $2,400. A graduate of
the Academy of the Sacred Heart and a keen student, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the
University of Alabama and studied at the Sorbonne. After World War II she moved to New York
City where she had her own New York agency, which represented classical music performers.
Among her clients were violinist Yehudi Menuhin and opera stars Lily Pons, Rise Stevens, Ezio
Pinza, Leonard Warren and Marguerite Piazza.
The death of her father in 1964 brought Muriel back to New Orleans where she immediately
plunged into the art world. For years her father had served as president of the New Orleans Opera
Association and she soon joined that board. Because the opera needed an orchestra, Francis joined
the board of the New Orleans Philharmonic Orchestra and became its president. The Philharmonic
continued to serve as the fount for members of the New Orleans Opera Orchestra.
Art did not stop with music as Francis became an promotor of the Contemporary Arts Center
and a supporter of Dashiki Theatre, an early black theatre troupe. When the struggling Tennessee
Williams was looking for a place to stay she put him up at her mansion on Louisiana Avenue, a
venue memorialized in Suddenly Last Summer. On the political side she was president of the New
Orleans chapter of the American-Israeli Cultural Foundation and on the social side she was
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
118