Muriel Arceneaux

Muriel Dees Arceneaux, 85, a native of Finchburg, Ala., and former, longtime resident of Houma, La., died Friday, April 22, 2011, at her home.

Ms. Arceneaux was born Feb. 18, 1926. She spent her early years in Monroe County, Alabama. She was a graduate of Alabama College for Women, now the University of Montevallo. She later received her Master’s Degree from Nicholls State University. In 1958, she moved to Houma, where she resided until 2007, when she relocated to Vicksburg, Mississippi.

In Houma, she was an active member and officer of the Business and Professional Women’s Club of Terrebonne Parish. She chaired several committees and was an officer in the Louisiana Business and Professional Women’s Clubs. She was a member of the American Association of University Women-Houma/Thibodeaux Branch and served on Louisiana AAUW committees as well.

Ms. Arceneaux was appointed to the Terrebonne Parish Library Board of Control on which she served for 20 years. She was instrumental in organizing the Friends of the Library and served as liaison between the Trustees and the Friends. She worked to raise funds for the organization which funded the video and audio collection, wrote many grant proposals which were funded and brought art, photographic, and other exhibits to the library. She was tireless in her efforts to make the library accessible to all members of the greater community and in her advocacy of the library as an educational institution. She served on the Steering Committee and Board of the Young Women’s Christian Association for seven years. This organization established the first Battered Women’s Center and Counseling program and Crisis Line in the bayou parishes. She chaired the first Parenting Seminar ever held in Houma.

She organized a local chapter of the Equal Rights Coalition, which worked for many years for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. She served on State Committees and at the national level of BPW and AAUW to bring about needed legislative changes affecting the lives of women and children. She was a member of the First Governor’s Woman’s Conference in Louisiana and served on the Steering Committee for organizing the Louisiana Women’s Conference. She was the Historian of the State Conference and participated in the writing and publishing of the Louisiana Report on the Conference. She was a member of the Houma-Terrebonne Arts and Humanities Executive Board and a member of the Cancer Society Board. She served as a docent at Southdown Museum for several years. For her many years of varied but dedicated work in the community she was recognized in 1991 as a Community Activist.

She will be most remembered by her compassion for others and as a testimony to the power of each of us individually to make a difference in our local, national or worldwide community.

She is survived by her children, Windell Richard Owens, Denise Owens-Mounger and Dorothy Arceneaux Stahr; four grandchildren, Emily Jensen, Mary Kathryn Sciarretta, Richard “Rick” Owens and Ann Pinder; and three great-grandchildren, Smith Jensen, Collier Jensen and McCarlye Pinder.

She was preceded in death by his parents, Dennis Daniel and Muriel Downey Swanson Dees.

Memorials may be made to French Camp Academy in French Camp, Mississippi or the American Cancer Society. (Charles Riles Funeral Home)