A Day Beyond Valentine’s,
Is Never Too Late,
To Set Beyond Gold, Memories!
Of a Special Wedding Date.
Saturday, February 15, 2014 proved itself to be another golden tick of the clock in the lives of two loving and giving people, Jimmie and Ruth Minutes. The former Houstonians and New Orleanians nw make their home in Lafayette, Louisiana, where 89-year old Jimmie, who turns 90 on August 5th, this summer, goes to work everyday to do business as his “American Pop Art” store in this beautiful Evangeline country city – and where Ruth Menutis stays busy also with national and international projects she runs through her “Branded Works” and various real estate developments projects.
Ruth and Jimmie, February 15, 1960;
How It All Started in Houston.
Saturday, my son Neal and I attended the couples 54’s wedding anniversary at the Palmetto club in downtown Lafayette. Unlike our first big party in 2011, which open to the public, this one was a smaller gathering of about 160 family member and friends. One thing didn’t change. – The Platters were back to sing us again into the late night with classics like “Only You” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” Attorney Paul Valteau of New Orleans and Houston, a close family friend, was present to host the show and even got pulled into one routine in which he actually performed a number with the Platters..
Paul Valteau (2nd from left) belts it out with the Platters.
The proverbial assessment this time fits. – A good time was had by all. The Menutis couple is beyond generous. Everything they do for others leaves their hearts in the name of love and comes back to them, at least, a hundred times over. Once again, I leave their company refreshed and renewed in my faith in others – and fully recovered from any recent disappointments by the presence of ego, greed, and meanness upon the human condition. As long as there are good people like Jimmie and Ruth Menutis still moving in our small and large common circles, there is hope for the salvation of giving over taking.
Jimmy Menutis Club
Telephone near Wayside
Houston, 1958
For those of you who don’t know, or aren’t old enough as Houstonians to remember, Jimmy Menutis was the fellow back in the late 1950s who converted the old Wayside movie theater on Telephone Road at Wayside into “The Jimmy Menutis Club”, Houston first home for continuous personal appearances by all the early giants of Rock and Roll. All the big ones played at Jimmy’s place, and those of us who were just coming of age in this new world of musical genre like no other were the beneficiaries. Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, The Platters, even Louis Armstrong – they all played there. And in the process, the business of having to search for some rock and roll on black music stations only came to an end. The genre went main stream to all the previously all white Perry Como and Pat Boone stations to stand as the new American musical art form it deserved credit for being.
Jimmie and Ruth,
watching the show.
Those were the days, but like all other days, as we quickly or belatedly learn, they flew by like the quickest blink of the cat’s eye, but, last night, when we were young, and last Saturday, when some of us were together in Lafayette, they, and parts of our youthful hope, lived again.
An Anniversary Waltz
Thank you, Jimmie and Ruth, for being the beautiful people who you truly are!
Ruth and the Menutis Family thank everyone for coming to the celebration!
For those of you who missed our first Menutis fly-by in 2011, here are a few past links to some of our previous Jimmy Menutis articles from The Pecan Park Eagle:
https://thepecanparkeagle.wordpress.com/2010/08/05/jimmy-menutis-the-houston-heart-of-rock-n-roll/
https://thepecanparkeagle.wordpress.com/2010/08/15/a-letter-to-jimmy-menutis/
https://thepecanparkeagle.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/the-menutis-party-we-love-jimmy-says-it-best/
For Good Times and Bad,
Love is the Sole Answer,
The Only Healing Answer.
The Pecan Park Eagle 
February 17, 2014 at 6:17 pm |
We were so sorry to have missed this lovely party, but we had a 70th Birthday Party to attend on the same day. We know their party was the best ever. Hopefully the next time!!!
Love to both of you…..Steve and Mary Pat Schifani