• By CAROL ANNE BLITZER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Aug 31, 2009 - Page: 1D

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Marian Gant had no idea that a bill she had saved for 65 years would turn out to be a windfall.

She and her husband, Charles, were married in Baton Rouge in the summer of 1944, right after he had enlisted in the Navy.

Following the wedding, the couple went on a three-day honeymoon to the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans.

“He surprised me with the bridal suite,” Marian Gant said. “It was the first time either of us had seen a king-size bed.”

They paid $18 for the first night’s stay in the bridal suite and then moved to a regular room, where they stayed for two nights at $7 a night. They made two telephone calls at 10 cents each, making the total bill $32.20 for three days.

“No tax on anything,” Charles Gant said.

Marian Gant doesn’t know why, but for some reason, she saved the bill, which she only recently discovered while going through some old papers.

This July, the Gants celebrated their 65th anniversary. Their two daughters, Charles Ann Strickland, of Mandeville, and Kim Shackleton, of Metairie, wanted to give their parents a party.

“I told them, ‘Please don’t give us a big party. We had a big 50th. I want you two and your husbands and the three grandchildren to celebrate together with us,’” Marian Gant said.

She told her daughters what she really wanted was to go to the newly reopened Roosevelt Hotel on July 17 and 18. “That’s when we were there in 1944,” she said.

Shackleton called the hotel and spoke to Tod Chambers, the general manager. She told him that her mother had the original bill from their honeymoon in 1944.

“They took it from there,” Marian Gant said.

The Gants drove to New Orleans on Friday of their anniversary weekend. They went straight to the hotel. When they identified themselves at the front desk, everyone knew who they were.

A bellman led them to their room, which turned out to be the Huey P. Long Suite. “It was about as big as our house,” Charles Gant said.

Chambers met the Gants in the suite and told them some of the history of the hotel and the suite, which contains a living room, complete dining room, butler’s pantry, a huge bathroom and a bedroom with fine antique furniture.

The hotel, one of New Orleans’ most famous landmarks, was opened in 1893 as the Grunewald. It was renamed the Roosevelt in honor of President Theodore Roosevelt after it was purchased by a group of New Orleans investors in 1923. The hotel’s longtime manager, Seymour Weiss, was a friend and confidante of Huey Long, who had a 12th-floor suite in the building.

In 1965, the Roosevelt was acquired by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts and officially renamed the Fairmont. It took 10 feet of water in the basement from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and closed indefinitely.

In August 2007, it was purchased by Natchitoches-based Dimension Development Co., which brought in Hilton Hotels to renovate it as part of the company’s upscale Waldorf Astoria properties.

The “new” Roosevelt opened this summer following a $145 million renovation.

After the Gants settled in the hotel, they dressed and went downstairs to the Sazerac Bar and Restaurant. They were given the best table in the room and presented with menus printed with “Happy Anniversary Mr. and Mrs. Gant” in gold lettering. 

“Of course, I had to cry,” Marian Gant said.

The hostess came to the table and asked the Gants if they had “a song.”

“At our age, all of our friends had a love song,” Marian Gant said. “Ours was ‘It Had to Be You.’” Within a few minutes, the Sazerac trio was playing the song.

For dessert, the restaurant had prepared a special Teddy Bear cake for the Gants.

They spent Saturday morning sightseeing and then returned to the hotel, where they were joined by their children and grandchildren.

Their grandson, Adam Shackleton, who works in Rochester, N.Y., surprised his grandparents.

“We knew he wouldn’t be coming,” Marian Gant said. “But the girls said to open the door to the adjoining room, and there he was.”

The whole family stayed in the hotel Saturday night. They gathered in the Sazerac, where the daughters presented their parents with a frame containing the original bill and a picture of the couple taken in 1944.

“We all cried again,” Marian Gant said.

That night, they had dinner together at Bayona.

In the morning, the family attended Mass at the Church of the Immaculate Conception, where the Gants had gone on their honeymoon.

“I light candles for everything and pray to Mary,” Marian Gant said. “The kids thoroughly believe that if I light a candle, (what I pray for) is going to happen.”

The first thing Marian Gant did when she entered the church was to light a candle. “I said what more fitting can we say but thank you,” she said.

Brunch at Mr B’s Bistro was the final event of the weekend.

Although the children paid for some of the incidentals, the Gants’ accommodations at the Roosevelt were “on the house.”

“The valet parking for one night was more than the original bill,” Charles Gant said.

“Having the original bill is what did it,” Marian Gant said. “We told Mr. Chambers and the girls that it was the most remarkable weekend of our 65 years. This just doesn’t happen to people like us.”