Galliano man had talent for classic muscle

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Galliano native Wayne D. “Big Arnold” Curole was known as a kind-hearted man talented with his hands.

He owned Curole’s Body Shop and would often repair neighbors’ and friends’ cars on credit that he often never received payment for.

“People came in the shop and didn’t have any money [and] he’d say, ‘OK, pay me later,’” recounted his sister, Mary Gisclair. “And you know what ‘later’ does. Most of the time that never happened. But that was the kind of [person that he was.] Very, very kind-hearted.”

Wayne was the second of five children. When he was a child, he was the asthmatic, “mild-mannered” child closest to his mother, Anna Curole. Though, he didn’t make it past 8th grade he was a hard worker from an early age, Mary said.

His first job was sweeping wood shavings from the floor of what the locals called “the boat shed” when he was 10-years-old. Back then, power tools were rare, Mary said. Men would use hand planers and drills to will the wood into navigable form. Wayne and his brothers would come after the boat builders were done for the day to sweep the pile of shavings up only to accumulate the following day.

Later in his teens, Wayne left “the boat shed” to work at the National Food Store in Cut Off, where his work ethic led to his promotion to produce manager by 19.

He left management at the grocery store to work for Andrew Cheramie’s Marsh Buggie’s out of Galliano. It was here where Wayne was immersed in mechanical work, which would be play a major role in the rest of his life.

Wayne travelled throughout southeast Louisiana’s most remote marshlands to repair engines to vessel’s that were dead in the water. One time, while on such a call outside Morgan City in the Atchafalaya Basin, he fell into the water.

There was only one problem: Wayne never learned how to swim.

“He swam like a rock,” said his brother, Buddy Curole. “He still didn’t know how to swim when he died.”

Another thing he never learned how to do was ride a bike. But if it roared, puttered, or purred, he drove it. So he put an engine on a bicycle and rode that.

“I don’t know if he didn’t like to pedal or what,” Buddy said.

After seven or eight years working on the marsh buggies, Wayne worked at the Tarpon Ford Dealership in town doing body work. He developed quite a knack for it, producing beautiful work. It wasn’t long before he started his own body shop in Galliano. He started Curole’s Body Shop and was his own boss for the rest of his life.

He was very talented with the spray gun and could restore a vintage car to its original glory, a skill that is uncommon today.

Once, his brother Buddy recalled, Wayne bought a vintage Corvette that was in abysmal condition.

“They had chickens living in it and I said, ‘You’re going to fix this?’”, Buddy asked his brother as they loaded the hull of the once majestic car onto a trailer. “’Yeah,’ he said, ‘I’m gonna fix it. You can’t look at it now. You’ve got to look at it after it’s finished.’”

Wayne restored that Corvette to immaculate condition, Buddy said. He sold that car, but Wayne had restored many, many others. If a Cut Off/Galliano resident had a car problem or body damage, they went and saw Wayne.

Wayne also loved to fish and, though he had no children of his own, would often take his nieces and nephews on the water

Wayne also had a passion for racing. Every Sunday during the early- to mid-70s, Wayne towed his finely tuned ’69 Torino Cobra to the Southland Drag Way in Houma. Wayne raced in the NHRA Stock Eliminator class during the Golden Aged of American muscle cars. Later on, he raced his Cobra in the Super Stock class, which allows for a little modification to the car.

He even won a few trophies during his racing days.

Being the mechanically inclined, Wayne would buy something new that he could just as easily fix. If he had a broken appliance, machine or tool, he would fix it. He could weld, so no project was too big a challenge.