“I'll join the happy angel band/Just over in the Gloryland!” sang the Pinstripe band, as the procession headed down Chartres Street, crossing Jackson Square in front of St. Louis Cathedral. (On Mardi Gras, the Krewe of Coleen would always stop in front of the cathedral to circle up and entertain onlookers with an often lively display of dancing and revelry.) Upon reaching Queen Coleen’s apartment on 900 block of Chartres, the celebrants gathered around the memorial cart for one last “Hail to the queen.” Inside was a lovingly arranged assemblage of photos, portraits, drawings, books and cherished mementos — a veritable shrine to the memory of Queen Coleen. The repast included her signature libation — milk punch. One final ride. One last party. Everyone present knew that Queen Coleen wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

The procession making its way down Conti Street Longtime Krewe of Coleen member Kristina "Kitty Kat" Steinke and her friend, Janis Schreiber, outfitted Queen Coleen's memorial grocery cart, which conveyed her ashes and crown through the French Quarter.

Born in Ruston, LA, Coleen Cole Salley grew up mostly in Baton Rouge, where her father, James Perry Cole, was a professor in the mathematics department at Louisiana State University. She graduated from LSU with a degree in English in 1946, and later met her husband, Elmore Salley, a medical resident, in Stuttgart, Germany, while teaching at a school for dependents of the U.S. military.

She was just 31 years old, and living in Richmond, VA, when tragedy struck. Elmore had dropped off Coleen and their three children — ages four, two and 11 months — at the airport. They flew to New Orleans, to attend Coleen’s father’s retirement party. On his way home, Elmore died in a car crash.

“I was 33 before I came to grips with it,” she told New Orleans writer Whitney Stewart. “I didn’t give up on God, but I shook my fist at him for two years. And then I just picked myself up and marched on. And I’ve had a wonderful life.

She moved back Baton Rouge as a single mother, with “virtually no money and no planned future,” as David Salley related in his eulogy. But she did have her family. “It was because of the love and aid of our grandparents [Una and James] that Mom was able to refocus her goals and plans,” David noted.

She returned to LSU, obtaining a master’s degree in library science in 1962. As David recalled, “She threw herself into her career and worked like a dog to make every penny she could for one reason — actually, three reasons: George, Genevive and me.”

In 1964, after a teaching stint in Rock Hill, SC, she relocated her family to New Orleans to teach library science at the University of New Orleans. Over the course of a 30-year career at UNO, she became a nationally renowned guru of children’s literature.

Writing in the New Orleans Times-Picayune in November 1997, Marigny Dupuy noted that Queen Coleen was “a friend to the famous and a fairy godmother to the beginners, from authors and illustrators, to editors, publicists and sales reps in most of the major publishing houses — she knows them all. And they ALL know her.”

For Queen Coleen, the artistry of children’s books could only be fully appreciated when animated by a human voice. And her voice was indelible — and utterly captivating when reciting a make-believe story or spinning a yarn from the colorful thread of her actual life.

Queen Coleen performing in the Kids' Tent at Jazzfest 2008 She honed her gift as a storyteller by reading to her children and students, then her grandchildren and audiences around the world. At her memorial service, Father Tony Rigioli drew laughter when he said that in her new life, “she’s reading to every angel in Heaven.”

“Everyone who ever heard it remembers the sound of her voice, that greeting — ‘How y’all DEWin’?’ — usually followed by a conspiratorial ‘Listen to this!’” Susan Larson, book editor of the Times-Picayune, wrote in an appreciation. “Once you heard that gravelly growl of hers, it was a siren song, a call to mischief, a warning to pay attention.” Larson first met Queen Coleen while working in the UNO book store. “Once a semester, she would bring her children’s literature class into the store and would pluck books from the shelves to read to her students. She was so good, so expressive — and had such a vivid presence — that everyone would stop to listen. “They had no choice. She had an amazing emotional range, with a divine sense of comedy and a deep understanding of sadness. Invariably everyone would end up with tears in their eyes, moved by the simple power of a woman reading a children’s story aloud.” Queen Coleen never remarried. As a widow, she often found herself partaking in revels involving her children and their friends. For the Howell family of Baton Rouge, Queen Coleen and her children were practically next of kin. Jean Howell and her three younger brothers — Evans, Jeff and Phil — were roughly the same age as Queen Coleen's brood. Their father, Blackie, who passed away in June 2007, had been a friend of Coleen’s since high school. When Queen Coleen returned to Louisiana to teach at UNO, she reconnected with Howell clan.

“As you know, most children think their parents are square. Which, I guess, we were, as far as our children were concerned,” Blackie’s wife, Mary Jane, recalled in a 2007 interview. “They called her Aunt Coleen, so they just assumed we were really related — which we were not. But she was Aunt Coleen to my children, and she was more interesting, I guess you would say. Certainly expanded their vocabulary.”

During Mardi Gras, Queen Coleen’s house near the shore of Lake Ponchartrain became party central. “The informality of my home lent itself to kids coming in and throwing their sleeping bags on the floor,” Queen Coleen, reflecting back on the origins of the Krewe of Coleen, once told an interviewer.

How it all got started could be described as a mere coincidence — or a rendezvous with destiny.

It was Fat Tuesday 1973. Coleen and a small contingent that included her teenage son George and Jean Howell where watching the Bourbon Street Awards costume contest. And, as Howell would later recall, “this kid came up with a grocery cart and asked if we wanted it. She [Coleen] was pretty wobbly at that stage, and we said ‘Sure!’ You know, ‘Coleen, why don’t you get in here — we’ll push you....’ ”

“So we just started pushin’ her through the crowd, saying ‘Make way for the queen!’ I don’t even know why we called her the queen, but we just said, ‘Make way for the queen!’ and they did. As she said, it parted like the Red Sea.... And people we just leanin’ over and kissin’ her and givin’ her beads and givin’ her drinks, and she was drinkin’ out of anything. We were all really kind of worried, you know, but there was no stoppin’ her.”

At one point, as Queen Coleen herself would later recall, all of a sudden, as if on cue, a wonderful jazz band came marching through the crowd. “Oh my God,” she said, “let’s go with that band! Just push the damn grocery cart!”

“And we did,” said Howell. “We just started chasing them, and we became the parade.”

As far as the tipsy queen was concerned, the fact that her young courtiers wound up having to look after her was a welcome change from her usual mother-at-Mardi Gras dilemma — worrying about the kids and where they might have run off to. Now, with her planted in the cart, they couldn’t desert her and even if they did happen to drift off, it was always easy to find her.

Apart from being a fun way to keep the young ’uns together at Mardi Gras, there was the all-important egocentric beneift: Queen Coleen became the center of attention. "She thrives on that—always has," Jean Howell once observed.

As is often the case with offbeat Mardi Gras phenomena, what starts as a spontaneous lark can wind up taking on a life of its own. For Mardi Gras 1974, Queen Coleen started off her day in the grocery basket. She donned a purple velvet crown that had been crafted specially for her by a friend of Jean Howell’s, Reva Stover. Her accomplices sported homemade Krewe of Coleen T-shirts and headbands emblazoned with “K of C” in glitter.

“That’s why it’s lasted 33 years — Coleen wanting people to adore her,” Jeff Howell, in a 2007 interview, opined.

No question: Queen Coleen’s personality was in various ways idealliy suited to her royal role. Jean Howell once described her as “the funniest, most fun person,” a truly “magnetic” presence who drew people in from “so many different walks of life. She’s taught me so much about enjoying life and about connecting with people, in so many different ways. I mean, she’s an amazing person. And she’s also turned me on to a lot of different interests that I might not have been exposed to. She just draws people in."

A charismatic, fun-loving monarch, to be sure — the jolly old lady in a grocery cart. A genuine salt-of-the-earth type who cursed like a sailor and loved to swill cans of beer and rub shoulders with the masses — the “hoi polloi,” as she was known to say. Indeed, some of her most favored royal subjects, on whom she’d bestow beads, doubloons and blessings, were people who had to work on Mardi Gras — parking lot attendants, hotel bellmen and members of the city’s fire department. (The krewe always made a point of stopping at the engine house on Decatur Street, where Queen Coleen would offer a ceremonial toast.)

But the queen’s belevolence had a flip side. Woe be to those who ran afoul of her strong will and keen sense of royal prerogative.

“One of the first memories I have of her, my Ya Ya, was at a restaurant,” grandson Justin Salley told an interviewer. “It was Mardi Gras time. Jeff Howell and everybody was in town, and we went to a restaurant. There was no smoking. But she wasn’t having that. This was back when she smoked cigarettes. And she smoked the whole evening in the restaurant, and I remember there was a lot of noise, a lot of yelling. But she got her way.

Grandson Justin Salley (left) and Jeff Howell making merry with Coleen at Mardi Gras 2007 A charismatic, fun-loving monarch, to be sure, but woe be to those who ran afoul of her strong will and keen sense of royal prerogative.

“Her persona has always been larger than life. It’s just been part of who she is.” Playing the ham was certainly part of that persona. With a comedian’s sense of irony about royal pretensions, she could affect an imperiousness reminiscent of the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland (whom Alice, in the Disney movie based on the book, called a "fat, pompous, bad-tempered old tyrant"). But if the Queen of Hearts was quick to decree death sentences at the slightest offense — “Off with their heads!” — Queen Coleen often resorted to what David Salley, in his eulogy, referred to as “expletives of endearment.” “Most everyone here today, at one time or another, was on the receiving end of one of Mom’s expletives of endearment,” he said, drawing a chorus of knowing chuckles from the audience. Krewe of Coleen stalwart Charles Hadley — a dear and devoted friend of Queen Coleen’s who was instrumental in keeping the krewe going during lean years — endured more than his share of verbal lashings. “I cuss him out all the time,” Queen Coleen once said. “Jackass! He’s always trying to make decisions on his own. “The queen doesn’t tolerate independent thinkers,” she added, affecting a tone of queenly condescension. “What royalty does?”

That Queen Coleen, a woman of some heft, could even fit into a grocery cart was no small feat. For years, sitting with her legs doubled back under her butt, she endured no small amount of stress on her knees. To blunt the pain, on the day before Mardi Gras she’d visit the doctor to get her knees injected with cortisone.

It was only after Queen Coleen underwent foot surgery to remove a bunion tthat necessity became the mother of invention: Krewe members took a pair of heavy-duty wire clippers to the cart, cutting an opening so that Queen Coleen could sit with her legs extending through the bottom of the basket.

With her lower body obscured by crepe paper and other decorations adorning the Royal Chariot, some people would mistake her for an invalid. For them, the grocery cart lady was a source of inspiration. Among the comments Jeff Howell remembers overhearing: “Aw, ain’t that great. She ain’t got no legs, and she still comes out to party.”

Queen Coleen skipped town for Mardi Gras in 1995 and 1996. The following year, she was looking forward to experiencing the gala from a fresh perspective. All those years of sitting in the Royal Chariot, with her field of vision restricted, had her thinking that she’d been missing out on the full panorama of the spectacle.

But as it turned out, being a mere spectator as opposed to a noted participant was a letdown. Moreover, it dawned on Queen Coleen that in all those years of parading, her krewe had offered an amusing alternative to the raunchier side of the festivities, providing the folks on the street with countless memories and Kodak Moments to take back home. She hadn’t been missing anything after all.

Reflecting on this revelation in a 1997 interview, she summoned memories of random people from years past whom she'd seen sitting on some stoop, looking forlorn or worn out, or maybe just lost in their own world. “And we'd come by and ... my krewe would holler, ‘Hail to the queen!’ And they'd look up, and here was this old woman in a grocery basket. And a smile would break out on their face.... Momentarily, there was that absolute delight with this foolishness,” she recalled.

An impressive feat. And indeed, in a city where eccentricity is a practically a civic virtue, and where making a spectacle of oneself is elevated to an art form, she was revered as a true original.

A major accolade came her way in 2004, when she reigned over the Krewe du Vieux — a popular satirical parade known for choosing distinguished local cultural figures as royalty. Selected on the basis of her professional accomplishments as well as her status as a Mardi Gras legend, Queen Coleen considered it the greatest honor she’d ever received.

The Krewe du Vieux’s theme that year was “Quest for Immorality,” a play on the title of a major exhibit then underway at the New Orleans Museum of Art: “The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt.” In an official toast delivered at a krewe fete a few days before the parade, the “Questing Queen” Coleen was hailed as “our ageless Animatrix, who proves every day that lust for life, passion for pleasure, thirst for new thrills, is an integral, eternal aspect of the human experience….”

A bawdy free-for-all known for blasphemy, political lampooning, sexual innuendo, balderdash, ridicule, outrageous behavior and the liberal use of phalluses for float props and costume accessories, the Krewe du Vieux prides itself on testing, if not exceeding with abandon, the limits of decorum. “Queen Coleen,” proclaimed the krewe’s Le Monde de Merde newsletter, “will guide the Krewe though the long dark night into the promised land of eternal dissolution, depravity and decadence.”

So how did Queen Coleen — grandmother, professor emeritus and esteemed grandee in the world of children’s books — feel about reigning over a procession of ne’er-do-wells? Was she at all reticent about the “Immorality” theme?

“You know, I can go along with that because this is my other life,” she explained in a telephone interview before the parade. “You’ve heard of the those three faces of Eve? Well, this is the two faces of Coleen Salley. I’ve got my professional face and my raise-hell face. The raise-hell face is going to be the queen in the ‘Quest for Immorality.’ ”

The atmosphere was electric in the parade staging area, in Faubourg Marigny, as Queen Coleen, upon making her entrance, was greeted by a revved-up Krewe of Coleen. Cries rang out — “Hail to the queen!” “Down your knees, servants! Down on your knees!” “Bow, you scurvy dogs!” “I am not worthy!”

The resplendence of her regalia was quite a departure from the muumuus she favored for her Mardi Gras jaunts in the grocery basket. Queen Coleen consulted on the design, collaborating with Krewe du Vieux couturier Lee White to marry an Egyptian theme with a peacock motif and flourishes emblematic of Louisiana and the faux royalty of New Orleans Mardi Gras.

Her gold satin collar was embellished with peacock feather medallions and cabochon jewels. A dazzling bejeweled headpiece, accessorized with peacock feathers and Mardi Gras beads, boasted a gold crawfish centerpiece in place of the usual Egyptian scarab or scorpion. An underlay of gold satin contrasted royally with a purple robe trimmed with faux cheetah. Long gloves of gold satin and a black cherry wig imbued with a purple sheen rounded out the ensemble. Accompanying the queen on the royalty float was Charles Hadley, variously referred to as her Minister of Libations or personal slave. His pharaonic regalia included a traditional headpiece with blue and gold stripes, a gold leather collar and a tiger skin robe.

Charles Hadley with Coleen, her daugther, Genevieve (left), and Jean Howell at Krewe du Vieux 2004 For the resplendent queen, being chosen to reign over the bawdy free-for-all was a crowning achievement.

Once aboard the royalty float, Queen Coleen beamed like a triumphant Hollywood starlet on Oscar night. “It feels like I finally made it,” she said. Told that she looked like she belonged up there, riding high on a throne, she remarked, cryptically, “I think I’ve been here before, in another life.”

A legend on the realm of Mardi Gras, Queen Coleen was no less of an inspiration in the world of storytelling and storybooks. She was passionate about using the spoken word to spark the imaginations of children.
Presiding over Queen Coleen’s memorial service, Father Tony Rigioli drew laughter when he said that in her new life, reunited with her husband Elmore, “she’s reading to every angel in Heaven.”

“The proudest I ever saw Mom,” David Salley said in his eulogy, “was when she was holding one of her grandchildren on her knee, telling them one of her favorite stories.”

He went on to reveal how all of her children, grandchildren, neices and nephews reveled in her celebrity. “No one missed a chance to tell how their Mom, or Ya Ya or Aunt Coleen was a famous storyteller and children’s book author, and even did a national commercial for Visa.”

Queen Coleen honed her gift as a storyteller by reading to her children and students, and, later, her grandchildren and audiences in schools and the Kids Tent at the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. She was featured in the Visa commercial — filmed at the Maple Street Children’s Book Shop, in New Orleans — in 1992.

The shop’s owner, Cindy Dike, had been asked by Visa’s ad agency to recommend a storyteller. With a book in one hand and a hand puppet in the other, Queen Coleen is shown reading to a group of rapt children seated at her feet. In the final shot, after the tag line reminding viewers to bring their Visa card, she says “the end,” and the kids clap.

After retiring from UNO in 1994 as Distinguished Professor of Children’s Literature, Queen Coleen promoted reading through storytelling, previewed children's books for teachers and librarians, conducted workshops and made professional presentations at conferences. As her reputation grew, her services — as a storyteller and raconteur specializing in peppery folk humor — were increasingly in demand among companies and professional organizations looking for talent to liven up their events and gatherings. Her daughter, Genevieve Athens, of Portland, OR, became her booking agent.

All the while, she advocated on behalf of promising literary upstarts. William Joyce is among the more than 20 authors and illustrators who have decicated books to her. A native of Shreveport, LA, he first met Queen Coleen in the mid-1980s, when he was just starting out in children’s books. His wife Elizabeth’s cousins in Baton Rogue were close friends with Queen Coleen.

As Joyce would later recall, Queen Coleen had him pegged as a “little punk,” but nevertheless reluctantly agreed to drive to Baton Rouge to meet him, at a pool party hosted by the cousins.

Bill Joyce at Mardi Gras 2007 Upon seeing page proofs of his first book, Queen Coleen immediately recognized him as a prodigious talent.

Joyce’s first self-illustrated work, George Shrinks — about a boy who wakes up one day to find that he has shrunk, and has to devise clever ways to accomplish his daily tasks — was about to be published by Harper and Row (now HarperCollins Children’s Books). When Joyce showed her page proofs from the book, Queen Coleen was ecstatic that such a prodigious talent hailed from Louisiana. “You’ve made me the happiest fat old woman today in the state Louisiana,” she declared. “Thank God for ya!” Joyce has since garnered wide acclaim not only in publishing but also television and movies. George Shrinks became a popular PBS television series. His book A Day with Wilbur Robinson was made into a computer-animated Disney film, Meet the Robinsons, with the author serving as writer and executive producer. He won three Emmys for Rollie Polie Olie, an animated Disney Channel show based on his book of the same name. Other high points in his expansive oeuvre include creative contributions to the blockbuster Pixar movies Toy Story and A Bug’s Life; serving as producer and production designer on the animated film Robots; and numerous cover illustrations for the New Yorker magazine. Newsweek hailed him as one of the top 100 people to watch in the new millenium.

Queen Coleen, Joyce recalled in a 2007 interview, “was just there for me all along the way, pushing me and introducing me to people.”

In 1997, when Joyce was immersed in the creative side of making computer-animated movies, he had the opportunity to return the favor, drawing some Hollywood hotshots into Queen Coleen’s ever-expanding orbit.

At Joyce’s suggestion, Pixar’s co-founder and creative frontman, John Lasseter (who now oversees all Pixar and Disney films and associated projects), had decided to celebrate his 40th birthday in New Orleans. Joining him were Joyce along with various friends, colleagues and executive types. Running their party engines wide open, they stayed out late several nights in a row, drinking and raising a rumpus.

When Sunday morning rolled around, Joyce rousted his ragged cohorts and, announcing there was somebody he wanted them to meet, proceeded to drag them to 921 Chartres. Joyce later recalled their bleary demurrals, as wicked hangovers had them practically swaying on their feet: “We’re meeting some old woman? What is this we’re doin’ here?”

“And Coleen flings that door open: ‘Hello, d’awlin’! Come on in, I got plenty for you to eat and drink. Get in here right now!’ ”

Joyce would later admit he was “kind of worried” about how these “tough guys” — lords of the movie-making jungle accustomed to guiding projects costing tens of millions of dollars — would take to Queen Coleen. But within 20 minutes, they were at her feet, transfixed, like wide-eyed kids under the spell of a master magician.

“They were sitting on the floor, as she sat in her chair in the front room in her place on Charters,” recalled Joyce, “and she’s just telling what it was. ‘This is how you tell a story….’ And from then on, for four years running, they flew her into Disney and had her address every division of Disney: ‘Tell us what stories are. Tell us why stories are important. Tell us how you tell a story.’ ”

While Queen Coleen, in her guru role, rather enjoyed hopscotching around the globe from one engagement to another, collecting stipends for giving talks and telling stories, authors and other professional associates kept prodding her to channel her muse and take pen to paper. If she didn’t exactly owe it to the world to conjure an exciting new chapter in an already noteworthy career, she was nonetheless intrigued by the prospect of leaving a more lasting impression on the literary landscape.

So at an age when most people have long since dialed down professional pursuits in favor of rocking chairs and relaxation, Queen Coleen, after turning 70, not only maintained her hectic schedule but also began writing her own storybooks. Her debut, Who’s That Tripping Over My Bridge? (Pelican Press), appeared in 2002. A bayou-esque retelling of The Three Billy Goats Gruff, it’s rendered in a piquant, cadenced narrative style that would become Queen Coleen’s authorial trademark. Alive with colorful descriptions, choice repetitions and amusing expressions, her text just rolls off the tongue.

In Epossumondas (Harcourt, 2002), we meet an endearingly maladroit opossum in diapers. Epossumondas is his human mama’s “sweet little patootie.” He visits his human auntie “most every day” and receives something to take home to Mama. But the gifts never arrive in tact. Anticipation builds, with Mama becoming increasingly exasperated (“Epossumondas, you don’t have the sense you were born with!”), as one woeful, laugh-out-loud mishap follows another. It’s a variation on the old Southern legend of Epimonidas, an archetypal “noodlehead” tale in which a boy’s overly literal interpretation of his mother’s instructions results in hilarious bumbling.

A recipient of the prestigious Caldicott award, which recognizes picture books for both art and content, Stevens had already used her as the model for the central character in an earlier book, To Market, To Market (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1997). (She also dedicated the book to Queen Coleen.)

Written by Anne Miranda, the story features a shopper who goes back and forth to the market, carting home a succession of unruly animals. They run completely amuck. Eventually, the shopper gets the animals to push her back to the store in the grocery cart, and buys vegetables to fix a delicious soup. (A delicious irony, too, considering Queen Coleen’s history of having been carted around on Mardi Gras by a bunch of unruly party animals.)

Carting the disheveled shopper home in To Market, To Market, illustrated by Janet Stevens (© 1997 Harcourt Brace & Company) Art imitates life, and vice versa: The fun-loving Queen Coleen was known to get a few hairs out of place on Mardi Gras, when being carted around by a bunch of party animals.

Art imitates life, and vice versa. At book signings and readings, Queen Coleen wore clothes and accessories that matched Stevens’ illustrations of the characters modeled on her. As colorful as her floral-print dresses, she was, in every sense of the word, a “character.” Building on the success of Epossumondas, Stevens and Queen Coleen followed with two rollicking sequels. In Why Epossumondas Has No Hair on His Tail (Harcourt, 2004), Mama gets to play the role of storyteller — and what a doozy she tells! Turns out that Epossumondas’ great-great-grandpa Papapossum once had a craving for Bear’s persimmons — which sets the stage for a wild adventure that ultimately costs him and all future opossums their once-fluffy tails.

Epossumondas Saves the Day (Harcourt, 2006) is a comical retelling of the Sody Sallyratus folktale, in which an old woman can’t make biscuits because she's out of sody sallyratus (baking soda). One by one, each character goes to fetch it and is swallowed by a bear. The bear ends up getting tricked by a squirrel and disgorging the family, whereupon they all return home for breakfast. In Queen Coleen’s version, complete with the singsong refrain “Sody! Sody! Sody sallyraytus!” Epossumondas pulls off a heroic rescue of Auntie, Mama and Baby Gator from a “GREAT, HUGE, UGLY LOUISIANA SNAPPING TURTLE,” whose vanity leads to his comeuppance.

Having promoted the work of other authors for so many years, Queen Coleen was rightly proud to have finally made it to their level. But even as her sweet patootie possum propelled her to new heights, she never lost slight of her guiding mission: to hook children on reading.

In 2004, a group of writers, illustrators and children’s literacy activists launched a foundation in her honor. Now known as the Coleen Salley-Bill Morris Literacy Foundation, it promotes literacy in underserved K through 8 schools, with an emphasis on providing children with the personal experience of connecting with authors and illustrators of children’s books. (Bill Morris, a longtime friend of Queen Coleen’s who passed away in 2003, is also a legend in the world of children’s literature, having worked at the publisher now known as HarperCollins Children’s Books for 50 years.)

Not content to coast on her laurels, Queen Coleen finished new manuscript, Epossumondas Plays Possum, about a week before first experiencing symptoms of the fatal neurological disease that would soon claim her life. (The book is due out in 2009.)

Storyteller and raconteur extraordinaire, beloved author, tireless advocate for children's literature and literacy, celebrated Mardi Gras character — Queen Coleen was indeed, in the words of Bill Joyce, “a national treasure.”

Alas, the queen is dead. All hail Queen Coleen!