The Life of John Joseph Burdin Jr.
Funeral Services will be held at a 10:00 AM Mass of Christian Burial on Wednesday, November 24, 2010 at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist for John "J.J." Burdin, Jr., 68, who passed away on November 21, 2010 at 12:28 AM at Lafayette General Medical Center.
The family requests that visiting hours be observed at Delhomme Funeral Home on Tuesday, November 23, 2010 from 4:00 pm to 8:00 pm.
The 2006 Lafayette Civic Cup honoree and President Emeritus of the Louisiana Health System was well known for his distinguished professional career as well as his generous humanitarian efforts. He retired as CEO of Lafayette General Medical Center in 2001 after working there for 26 years beginning in 1976. He guided the hospital through important renovations and expansions, including the addition of the Burdin/Riehl Ambulatory Care Center and of connected medical offices and laboratories throughout the Oil Center. He cared deeply for and admired the dedicated services of the many employees who worked with him at the hospital. If asked about his job, he always said “It’s all about the people,” adding that he was there to serve them. Service to the hospital and to the wider community was the hallmark of his life. He was well known for his compassion and commitment to the hospital community as well as for his involvement in numerous city organizations and his work teaching in the Master’s of Business Administration program in the University of Louisiana B.I. Moody College of Business.
John Joseph Burdin, Jr. was born February 1, 1942 in Lafayette, Louisiana, the only son of John Joseph Burdin, M.D. and Helen Rose Broussard Burdin. He graduated from Cathedral High School in 1960 and attended Louisiana State University. He completed a B.S. degree in Biology and Chemistry at what was then the University of Southwestern Louisiana in 1965, before serving in the U.S. Army Medical Service Corps from 1965 to 1969, with a year of service on the DMZ in Korea. After completing a Master’s Degree in Health Care Administration at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, he concluded his administrative residency in 1971 at Montgomery Baptist Hospital in Montgomery, Alabama. He served from 1971 to 1976 as Assistant Administrator at St. Bernard’s Regional Medical Center in Jonesboro, Arkansas. He returned to Lafayette in 1976 as Vice-President of Planning and Development at Lafayette General Hospital continuing there then as Senior Vice-President of the Methodist Hospital Heath Care Network based in Houston, Texas when Lafayette General merged with that program. He became President and CEO of the newly independent Lafayette General Medical Center in 1995 until his retirement in 2001. Since that time he has served as a Health Care Consultant for Louisiana Health Care Group Incorporated.
Mr. Burdin was a member of and active in numerous professional organizations, frequently serving as a Board Member and as Chair of the Board of Directors. Among them were the Louisiana Hospital Association, the Acadiana Health Care Alliance, the Mid-Louisiana Health System Agency, the Greater Lafayette Health Care Forum, the Southwest Louisiana Education and Referral Center, the American Hospital Association, the American College of Health Care Executives and on the Governor’s Commission on Selection: Secretary of Health and Hospitals. He was a three time member of the Board of Directors and Vice-President of the Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce and a founding member of the Zydotech Task Force. He served for six years on the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Foundation Board of Trustees. He was Treasurer and Chairman of the Board of Leadership Lafayette and proudly served on the state board of Louisiana Special Olympics. In addition, he served as a member of the Board of Directors for Crimestoppers, the United Giver’s Fund of Lafayette, Ascension Day School, the Sterling Foundation, Hospice of Acadiana Foundation, the American Heart Association, the American Diabetic Association and on the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, the accrediting agency of higher education. He was widely respected as an active fundraiser for the UL Lafayette Foundation, the United Way, the Lafayette Education Foundation, Hospice Foundation, the Diabetes Foundation, Special Olympics, the Boy Scouts of America, the American Heart Association, several areas schools, and the Bishop’s Charity Gala. Mr. Burdin was instrumental in securing the first of ten Board of Regent’s Endowed Professorships in Health Care Science in the College of Nursing through the UL Foundation. Over the years he was tireless in securing additional funding for professorships and scholarships throughout the university, with a special endowment in the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum in the name of his son, Paul.
He was the recipient of the highly coveted U.S. Senator John T. Tower Distinguished Alumnus Award of Kappa Sigma Fraternity. Among other awards and honors were the 2006 Lafayette Civic Cup, the Distinguished Citizen of the Year Award from the Evangeline Area Boy Scouts of America, the Senior Level Health Care Regents’ Award from the American College of Health Care Executives and Ascension Day School Special Recognition. He was active in local Mardi Gras activities and pageants, first participating in early associations such as the Quota Club and the Krewe of the Troubadours. A long-time member of the Krewe of Gabriel, he reigned as King Gabriel LXII over the Greater Lafayette Mardi Gras in 2001 and was honored as King Laccasine XXVII by the Mystic Krewe of the Attakapas in 1995. An avid sportsman and hunter, he was known for his hospitality and generous spirit. In honoring him in 2006, Greg Davis noted that J.J. humbly went about quiet acts of kindness, paying utility bills for staff members, aiding employees involved in automobile accidents, flying an employee’s child in the middle of the night to Memphis for cancer treatment. His sister said of him, “Of all the things J.J. has done that have been publicly recorded, through his kindness and generosity he has done an equal number that no one knows about.” He will be greatly missed in his family and in the community.
He is survived by his wife of 31 years, Monique Faulk Burdin, his son, J. J. Burdin III of Houston, Texas, his wife Candice and two daughters, Ava and Colette, his daughter Claire Alvarado of Lafayette, her husband Danny and daughter Elena, three sisters, Vaughan Simpson and her husband Amos, Barbara Renaudin and her husband William, Kathryn Leonard, and her husband Jimmy, his maternal Aunt, Margaret Baudoin and her husband, Edmund, and numerous nieces and nephews. He was pre-deceased by his parents, J.J. and Helen Burdin and his son, Paul Winston Burdin.
Pallbearers will be Larry Eugene Baker, II, David Scott Baker, William Van Renaudin, III, James Leonard, Justin Leonard and Brian Leonard. Honorary pallbearers are Eugene Cella, Arthur Mouton, William H. Mouton, Bert Resweber, Perrett Guchereau, Gil Weimer, Harold Abdalla, Eddie Mouton, Ronald Arceneaux and Richard Zuschlag. Lectors will be Monique Cousins Hoffmeister and Barrett Cousins. Gift bearers and altar servers will be nieces and nephews of the Faulk family.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be sent to the J.J. Burdin Memorial Fund at the UL Foundation, 705 E. St. Mary, Lafayette, LA, 70503 or to Hospice of Acadiana Foundation, 2600 Johnston Street, Suite 236, Lafayette, LA, 70503.
Delhomme Funeral Home, 1011 Bertrand Drive, Lafayette, is in charge of funeral arrangements.
