John Pierre Blondeau

Pierre was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Oct. 16, 1935, son of the late Maude Amanda Bryan Blondeau and Ernest Eugene Blondeau. He had to grow up quickly due to the death of his father when he was only four years old. He followed his father’s footsteps by majoring in mathematics, obtaining his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, in 1957. Pierre was extremely charismatic, and had a brilliant and curious mind that fostered big dreams. While a student, he held summer jobs doing everything from bailing hay to tinkering in the Little Rock, Arkansas, Jacuzzi factory and learning to build stereo components from Paul Klipsch. The iconic five-foot-tall black Klipschorn and the yellow plyboard “hunker” horn took up residence in the living room near the Heathkit amplifier and turntable, which sat atop the custom-built 33 LP stereo stand. Pierre spent evenings in his garage full of power tools and hardware, building a rabbit hutch, a bunk bed set, and several other pieces of furniture, Schlitz at hand. He tinkered with his treasured 1971 Rally Sport Camaro, gold with a black vinyl top and white leather interior. The family’s other car was a wood-paneled Chrysler station wagon, in which we took vacations to visit the grandparents in Arkansas or to stay in a condominium on South Padre Island, long before it became a spring break destination.

After college, Pierre served briefly in the United States Air Force, working stateside, and then was hired by IBM. He changed jobs a few times in his quest to find an employer who would bring his computer programming ideas to life, relocating with his new wife, Evelyn Carole Summers Blondeau, and young family to Oklahoma, Illinois, and Arkansas, eventually settling in Houston, Texas, in 1969. He traveled widely for business, including international stints in Indonesia, China and Russia, and encouraged his children to travel and learn about other cultures and foreign politics. He eventually began his own consulting firm, Applied Industrial Mathematics (AIM), in 1980, which enjoyed some early success with ongoing business from Citgo refineries in Louisiana, setting up process control for petroleum processing plants, and from a cable television company in Houston, creating computer programs that rerouted the signal in case of line failure to maintain seamless customer operations. He marked AIM’s first big contract by purchasing each daughter a sterling silver James Avery ring comprised of her initials.

Pierre was a gifted pianist blessed with perfect pitch, and he entertained his family with his renditions of the St. Louis Blues, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita in C minor, and Francois Poulenc’s Mouvements Perpétuels. He had a wide range of musical interests, from the Beatles to the Dave Brubeck Quartet and from Gustave Mahler to Maria Muldaur. He likened himself a patron of the arts, taking the family to symphony, opera and ballet performances in Jones Hall and regularly borrowing works of fine art from the Houston Library’s downtown branch, which at the time allowed cardholders temporary possession of masterwork canvas prints. Pierre had an eye for works from artists such as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Paul Klee, and Mary Cassatt. Pierre led the family in weekend rituals of yard work to tidy up our home’s large corner lot followed by hamburger cookouts in the back yard, where he lit the charcoal fire with gasoline, much to the delight of his daughters and dismay of his wife. He was known for making a perfect batch of popcorn, using a repurposed baby bottle warmer, and tasty dried beans brought back to life in the Crock-Pot. Pierre and Carole entertained frequently, cooking meals of steak and potatoes or French hamburgers and soufflés from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, typically ending with a bowl of vanilla ice cream topped with green crème de menthe, sharing with their friends copious quantities of red wine from the hand-built rack behind the dining room door.

During the work week, the daughters were responsible for either dinner (a meat item, and one yellow and one green vegetable) or household chores including taking out the trash, or ironing Pierre’s work shirts that had been sprinkled with water and stored in the refrigerator. Chores were assigned using a grid taped onto the side of the refrigerator, each daughter represented by a different fruit magnet. If they did not comply, or if they committed other infractions of the house rules, they were ordered to deposit a portion of their weekly allowance into “the penalty box.” The eventual dispensation of these collections remained a mystery, but are assumed to have found their way back into Pierre’s pocket. He valued education and ensured that his daughters were promptly dressed and out of the house in ample time for school, instilling a sense of discipline that also extended to their musical studies. The built-in bookshelves in the wood paneled den were well-stocked and included a full set of the World Book Encyclopedia along with issues of National Geographic and Scientific American. All daughters studied the piano and other instruments including the guitar, flute, clarinet, and violin, as well as percussion, and participated in orchestra and band concerts. The local classical radio station (KLEF) provided regular background music in the house, and Pierre followed broadcasts of special interest as noted in the programming guides he received each week in the mail and taped to the wall near the hi-fi.

The family had recurring Friday evening poker games, with the order of winning hands written on the chalkboard in the breakfast area, which was transformed into a casino complete with customized Lite-Brite “Poker Night” artwork created with black construction paper and including the shapes of clubs and spades, diamonds and hearts. Pierre also enjoyed teaching his daughters to play chess, which he studied by reading text-length accounts of the 1972 World Chess Championship game between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, in addition to playing against a computer.

Pierre had wide ambitions including being president of the United States, which he demonstrated by taking a bid for the Texas Senate, running as a Libertarian against Kay Bailey Hutchison in 1994. He participated in the Houston chapters of Mensa and L’Alliance Française. Pierre was a fan of pop psychology, insisting that no one issue forth “bad vibes” which could have been caused by out-of-synch biorhythms. It was always a special occasion to eat dinner out, with occasional visits to the “burger wop.” Long before daddy-daughter dances were the norm, Pierre would take each daughter out individually for a “big deal” of clothes shopping and a fancy dinner at restaurants along the lines of Houston’s well-known Swiss Chalet or the nearby Steak and Ale.

Pierre welcomed countless family pets, with dogs ranging from Carole’s German Shepherd purebred show dogs Chris and April to mutts Rover and Honey adopted from the neighborhood gas station. Cats included the beloved Siamese bluepoint Henry who met an untimely end after a cacophonous brawl in the front yard and chocolate point Puddin’, who passed peacefully curled up on the living room floor. There was also Harvey the rabbit, and several guinea pigs and hamsters, including Sam, who became trapped in the nine-foot Knabe grand piano, eventually lured out with treats. There were several rescued baby birds, and one gerbil who met his unfortunate end with a broken neck from falling down a Habitrail tube.

After the dissolution of Pierre’s and Carole’s marriage, when their daughters were in their teens, Pierre was married for a short time to Susan Carpenter of Houston and then to Frances Ellis of Fayetteville, before embarking on a long-term relationship with Janis Crabbe Hoover of Houston, who died in 2008.

Pierre is preceded in death by his parents; brothers Ernest Eugene Blondeau, Jr., of Tucson, Ariz., and Robert Wayne Blondeau, who split his time between Alaska and Panama; and sister Christine Annette Blondeau of Fayetteville, Arkansas. He is survived by daughters Janet Suzanne Blondeau of Oakland, California, Sharon Elaine Blondeau of Alexandria, Virginia, Annette Amanda Blondeau Radvansky and son-in-law Michael Radvansky of The Woodlands, Texas, and Claire Evelyn Blondeau and son-in-law Christian Wilsey Sokoll, of Houston, Texas; former wife Carole McCune; granddaughters Caroline Elizabeth Hilbert, Christine Elaine Hilbert, and Gianna Maylon Radvansky, and grandson Gavriel Gelbart; and nephews William Hugh Blondeau, James Bryan Blondeau, and Randall Warren Blondeau; and a number of additional relatives.

The family will hold a private memorial service. Pierre’s and Christine’s cremains will be interred in the family plot at Washington Cemetery, in Houston, Texas, near their parents and other relatives. Donations can be made in Pierre’s name to https://washingtoncemetery.org/contact/donations.shtml.