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Acadiana's Ted Viator
by J. D. Norris, Lafayette, LA

While others are talking a good game on community activism, Ted Viator has become an unwitting if not unintentional symbol for an entire region, and a driving force behind carnival's "hottest ticket in town."

There's a myth about the typical Gay male that says he spends his time in cocktail lounges watching drag shows 'til the wee hours, contributing little to his fellow man aside from an occasional protest or two. But if that stereotype would ever need proving wrong, not that it hasn't, look no further than Lafayette, La. and one of its more respected civic icons.

It's been close to 23 years since Ted Viator left his sleepy Iberia Parish for dreams of becoming an architect. But that could be where the stereotype ended. Over the past decade, Viator has spent his days and nights becoming one of the most successful and sought-after landscape architects in Louisiana. Born the youngest of three sons and raised in New Iberia, Viator is owner of Lafayette-based Viator and Associates, a landscape architectural design firm that goes far beyond designing rose and rock gardens. In fact, Viator's clients range from the lofty mansions of St. Charles Ave. to Breaux Bridge civic leaders wanting ideas for an elaborately planned boat parade. But it's not just his profession from where the 40-something bachelor gains his reputation of both a shy unsung hero and a bitchy task master who settles for nothing less than perfection.

To social circles around the state, Ted Viator's name has become synonymous with one particular event that, for a large part, has helped put Lafayette on the map when it comes to Mardi Gras.

"I guess that's what they all know me for, the Apollo Ball," Viator said while attempting to sum up his growing role in both the Acadiana and Louisiana Gay communities. "That's just fine with me. I'm as proud as associating myself with the Krewe of Apollo as I am with my business or anything else I've been successful in."

Viator is captain of what is perhaps one of the state's most active-even largest-Gay carnival club. An Apollo mover and shaker for nearly two decades, Viator's name is as recognizable as the krewe's annual ball itself. An event that casts as much spectacle and glamour as any Las Vegas premiere, Viator is one of the dozens of krewe members who bring together 12 months of hard labor and creative brainstorming to a climatic event full of sequin-smeared costumes and enough bawd and camp to make Madonna blush.

His involvement in the organization and personal touch on everything from initial concept to choreographing huge dance numbers was no accident he said. As a boy, Viator was bored with the day-to-day chores of helping to run his father's dairy farm and took up dance lessons. From the beginning he says his sexuality was almost a given and his craving for showmanship just as obvious. As the only boy in his small town dance troupe, Viator says his family offered support from the first dance recital on.

"My mom used to sew my little costumes. There I'd be, marching in parades in New Iberia twirling my little baton," Viator laughed. "My brothers were always coming to my defense."

That initial flair for performing and the support from his family has helped Viator in his contribution to an ever growing carnival tradition. Growing larger by the year, Apollo de Lafayette hosts approximately 3,000 guests per year to its annual Mardi Gras ball, most of whom are personally selected by krewe members and most, at least 2,800 this year, who attend what is arguably the region's hottest and most anticipated social event. Held in Lafayette's Cajun Dome, the only venue around large enough to hold the krewe and their friends, the Apollo Bal Masque is planned and prepared for most of the year by the organization's 50 or so members, a relatively small group considering its community clout and the near $100,000 price tag it takes to organize and hold the ball.

But while Viator, the krewe's captain, receives much of the accolades for organizing the ball itself, he's quick to give most of the credit to longtime friend and krewe president Michael Doumit and members like Jimmy Pool, Billy Evans, Bob Pastor and Joel Theriot, to name a few.

"He's definitely a person who doesn't like recognition," Doumit said of his friend of nearly three decades. "He's shy, real shy. But he wants so bad to grow this Gay community to rise above the rest. He gives a lot that most people never know about."

It's statements like that which almost validate Viator as the apparent and obvious leader of a Gay community constantly growing in traditionally ultra-conservative Acadiana . Aside from organizations such as Apollo that have found a special niche among many mainstream south Louisianans, Gay-oriented nightclubs and Gay-owned businesses are beginning to take a stronger shape and role much like their counterparts in larger metropolitan areas. And it may be due to that growth that Viator is more frequently being called upon as an unofficial spokesperson for Gays and Lesbians around the region. It's a far cry from the days when Viator says his older brothers had to defend him against young bullies.

"Apollo started out being kind of on the edge like a lot of Gay things," he said. "Now the whole neighborhood comes to the ball. I think that's why Apollo has been so special to me and why I've been able to use it-how a lot of people have. It's given us this way to come out in the community and be proud of who we are and what we've accomplished."

If it's one trait friends and associates tend to note Viator for it is a relentless energy level and a personal drive that insists perfection. Viator admits to being a challenge to work along side of but says he's no perfectionist.

"He's stubborn. It's definitely his way or no way," Doumit laughs. "But we've learned to live with it and he's helped make us push harder."

Viator has put his restlessness to work in projects outside his beloved Apollo krewe and in more than just a few. Aside from being one of the primary organizers of the popular ball, Viator notes that at least $1 of each admission ticket is donated to local charities, primarily AIDS charities.

Nearly four years ago, Viator was lobbied by other local Gay leaders to help coordinate a small event that would not only raise a few dollars for local AIDS charities, but would provide a venue for Gays and heterosexuals to come together, publicly, for a common cause.

After helping to form a parent group called Friends United, Viator and others launched Red Ribbon Day, an annual spring time event hosting competitive games and picnics designed to raise desperately needed funding for South Louisiana's growing cases of HIV and AIDS. Now in its fourth year, Red Ribbon Day has raised approximately $36,000 according to Viator's estimate, an accomplishment for which he refuses to take credit.

"We've been real lucky with (Red Ribbon Day). It's taken off a lot better than we thought it would," Viator said. "We just wanted people to know that there was nothing to be ashamed of in raising money for AIDS and that it could be done in the daylight."

In addition to helping HIV and AIDS causes, RRD funds are used to assist PASA, the Performing Arts Society of Acadiana.

Viator added another project to his community resume' last year when he organized a Gay "best dressed" ball which brought in about $6,000 for AIDS and HIV related causes. Add to that list a growing, successful business, the daily and monthly challenges of helping run the krewe, another hat as organizer of his high school graduation class' twenty-fifth reunion and the upcoming Apollo krewe's Debutante Ball and you'd wonder where he buys the vitamins.

"I guess my biggest success would be seeing the physical changes I've helped to make," said Viator. "It makes it worth while when I can look at something I've helped to bring from idea to planning to reality and know that I've had something to do with it."

Adding to the complexity of Viator's life is a noticeable lack of an open, media-willing Gay voice. Slowly but surely, news media are turning to Viator for short sound bytes or quotes when reporting on Gay-related issues in Acadiana. It's a dubious and unsolicited position Viator says comes more by default than anything else. It's also one he admits to raising eyebrows, particularly in the Gay community.

"I think there are always going to be people who don't like me for that. But I don't think they dislike me for what I do as much as they may for seeing my face in the paper," he said. "But that's never bothered me. I never mind talking to the paper. It helps business too!"

As for ultimate goals, Viator says he has no specific ones other than seeing his business grow and keeping the Apollo ball and krewe in perspective. If it's one thing he worries about it is the organization becomimg too commercialized.

"I'm afraid of Apollo losing its mystique and individuality. But since we're still growing, I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon," said Viator. "The whole idea for me though is to have fun with it. When that stops, so will I. I don't think that's ever going to happen either."

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