In the fall of 2019, I registered neworleansdad.com. At that time, I had come to notice the immense popularity of neworleansmom.com, which is evidentially a part of a larger network of mom blogs across the us. I know my wife Frances had read many of the neworleansmom.com articles pretty often, and I thought their format was really well done. One evening, I punched www.neworleansdad.com into my browser to get a simple, ‘this site can not be reached’. Odd. There’s no way someone does own neworleansdad.com. So I went on over to GoDaddy (a website registrar service for those unaware) and punched in neworleansdad.com to see if the domain was available. Sure enough, and again to my amazement, it was. I was pretty dumbfounded that no one had picked that domain up, so I bought it. That was back in 2019, right before covid, right before I left my long time position at the Archdiocese of New Orleans in IT, right before I started focusing on what had been a side gig and went full time into my own business, right before I crashed a small airplane in the mountains of North Carolina. Right before a lot of things!
Over the last few years, I’ve tried to pawn this domain and prospective website off to a number of men whom I hold up way higher than me on my personal ‘fatherhood scale’. An unscientific scale of men I have always admired and held to be prime examples of dad-hood. They all considered it, but politely declined (probably because they were too busy doing dad-stuff! I get it. Me too. So I guess I’m it. The last on the list with only a 4 on my own, unscientific ‘fatherhood scale’. Hopefully I can get those same men to contribute in the future!
About me: I grew up in the ‘Greater’ New Orleans area. First Laplace until 1989, Slidell until 2001, Covington until 2005, and Algiers since 2008 (Yes, I moved from the Northshore to Westbank, I know, I know). Before I was married, I spent 4-1/2 years studying to be a priest for the Archdiocese of New Orleans. I took a year off after Hurricane Katrina with the intention to continue on the path toward priesthood, but ultimately re-met an old youth group acquaintance from my freshman year in Seminary college, and well you can imagine the rest. We are 18 years married, with 4 kids. I ended up working for the Catholic church for just about the same amount of time. I taught 1 year, worked as the IT guy for 2 years at another school, then finally worked at the main Archdiocese IT Office for 10 (and continue to help out for the last 5 years or so since I have been on my own with my own business).
Fatherhood has been one of the greatest blessings of my own life. We lost our first to still-birth Mardi Gras evening of 2009. This only made it sweeter when my oldest son Andrew was born in June of 2010. This dichotomy of death and life set the stage for my entrance into fatherhood. A realistic, pascal, and grounded launch into fatherhood. I don’t think I could have been more ready, but to be perfectly honest, NO ONE is ever really READY to be a parent. It comes the same way love comes to most of us. We date, prepare, etc, but when it comes, it comes and we have to figure out what to do with it!
So back to this… blog. I’ve had blogs in the past. I had one in the seminary, I had one when I first got married, and I even had one to document the airplane I started building! I do not plan to bore anyone with my own stories, philosophies, theology, etc. My plan is to create a space, similar to the New Orleans Mom’s site that chronicles fatherhood in New Orleans—because it’s so important. My hope is that this site will offer stories of inspiration from other fathers in the area. Hopefully some high profile men, but also many innocuous. I’ve found some of the best dads are often overlooked. They dad so hard, it’s hard for them to get noticed! I hope to highlight many of them too. Of course I grew up in the Catholic tradition, but I don’t claim this to be a ‘Catholic’ site. I hope to cover the gamut of fatherhood across the Greater New Orleans area to support fatherhood however it comes. Whether nuclear (of which I admit I am most fond), divorced, partnered, or widowed; long-distance fathers, empy-nester fathers, and spiritual fathers, I hope to be able to publish stories and experiences of local dads doing it well, or who have learned lessons of doing it not so well. Inspirational stories of struggle and triumph. How-to’s, ideas, events, resources, even fish reports. I also imagine to prospect of some podcasts in the future. Everything is on the table to support the mission of fatherhood down here in our small part of the world.
We’ll get started small with a few contributors. Maybe in the future we’ll spin up a 501(c)3 and beg for donations and sponsorship $’s so we can support and sponsor ‘dad stuff’ in the New Orleans area. If you know anyone you think would be a great contributor to these pages, please shoot me an email (sean@neworleansdad.com).