Dr. Kenneth Wayne Paul
March 10, 1935 - October 9, 2022
Dr. Kenneth Wayne Paul has died. And this is how he would wish it said.
Though he was a clergyman who served 40 years as the Rector of Holy Cross Episcopal Church in downtown Shreveport, he had no patience for elaborate expressions of transitioning to a heavenly life, believing that mortality was neither to be feared nor paraphrased away. Among his many fine qualities, frankness, a form of courage, was perhaps foremost.
A native of Rapides Parish, graduate of SMU, and the possessor of a Doctorate of Theology from the ultra-elite Christ Church College, Oxford, Kenneth, as his friends knew him, moved to Shreveport in the 1960s. He came first as Chaplain of Centenary College, where he zipped around town in canary-yellow Corvette. In the 1970s, Mayor Calhoun Allen appointed him vice chair of the committee to rewrite the Shreveport City Charter. At this time he became a prominent advocate for racial equality.
Father Paul, as his parishioners called him, worked tirelessly on behalf of Shreveport’s poor, who often found comfort and nourishment at his beloved brick church on Texas Avenue. He led his church to found affordable housing spaces for the elderly, later named in his honor.
Like Christ himself, Kenneth was especially devoted to those most neglected and outcast. In the 1980s he was Shreveport’s primary minister to men living with HIV and dying of AIDS, when others feared even to go near them. He was a principal founding member of the thriving Philadelphia Center, which has saved and improved innumerable lives through treatment and prevention of HIV and other diseases.
Kenneth never ceased from approaching life with eagerness and vivacity, even in his 80s. A bon vivant in many ways, he was known for his lifelong love of social gatherings, drinks and his ready, ribald wit. A lover of animals, he was a perennial sponsor of Robinson’s Rescue, and, at home, usually had a King Charles spaniel on his lap.
He loved his home, an early design of the famed local architect Sam Wiener, which he dubbed “The Parson’s Arms,” and had filled it with countless artworks and objects from his long studies and many travels. The eccentricities of this Anglophile and bibliophile with long, white hair and trailing goatee-mustache, too, were remarkable; often he uttered memorable axioms in his acquired Oxford accent and regaled acquaintances with stories of famous architects, playwrights, English noblemen and celebrities who had been his friends in his long cosmopolitan life.
He was the proud parent of two sons, William and Raymond, and was a doting grandfather. His wonderfully devoted wife of 46 years, Ginger, herself an active citizen with a zeal for missionary ministry to the needy in Shreveport as well as abroad, survives him.
Kenneth Paul had a heart of gold, a treasure he shared with more souls than could ever be remembered. Shreveport is the greater for his life and the lesser for his loss.
To know him was a 'spot of luck,' so raise a glass (of gin and ice if you can) to his memory. He would have loved to join you. Cheers!