Spreading his wings

John Bennett “Ben” Soileau spent his entire adult life serving his country as pilot for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Customs Service, now the 62-year-old is serving God and his local community as an ordained deacon.
“I want to be part of our church community,” said Ben, who attends Our Lady Queen of All Saints Catholic Church in Ville Platte. “I want people to realize that yes I have had an exciting life but God was with me the whole time. It is only with him and the joy of our Catholic faith that we are going to find happiness and fulfillment in our lives.”
“It is gratifying to see something like this,” said Father Mitchell Guidry, priest at Our Lady Queen of All Saints. “That one of your own has been called by God and he said yes.”
Soileau was raised in Ville Platte and graduated from Sacred Heart School in 1971. He later attended and graduated from University of Louisiana-Lafayette (then known as University of Southwestern Louisiana) in 1976 with a bachelor’s degree in Biology Education.
But long before he was in college, Soileau dreamt of soaring through the clouds. That passion for flight is rooted in riding in a small single-engine, two-seat airplane as a young boy.
“When I was 12 years old and my best friend Don’s dad L.P. (Demoruelle) had a small plane,” Ben remembered. “He had a Aeronca Champion at the old Vidrine Airport. He took me for a ride and we flew over Mamou. I absolutely fell in love with flying that day. Everything in my life guided me to become a pilot.”
Soileau took flying lessons in college and joined the Air Force ROTC unit at USL. That paved the way for him to join the Air Force after graduation as he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant. He earned his wings after he completed pilot training at Laughlin Air Force Base, located in Del Rio, Texas.
Soileau’s career in the Air Force lasted eight and half years and he was stationed in such picturesque locales as Hawaii and Ft. Walton Beach, Florida. In 1985, he joined the Louisiana Air National Guard as a F-15 Fighter Jet pilot. During that same time, Soileau turned down a job as a pilot for Eastern Airlines to become a pilot for the U.S. Customs Service in charge of intercepting suspected drug smugglers, a position he held for 14 years.
“A larger plane would spot the smuggler planes and then we would locate that plane with a small jet, intercept them and then follow them and land behind them and force an arrest,” said Ben, who also had temporary assignments with U.S. Customs in Mexico, Honduras, Peru and Colombia.
Despite the dangerous nature of his profession, Soileau thoroughly enjoyed his time with the U.S. Customs Service.
“I really enjoyed my time with the Customs Department,” Ben said. “I met some great people and it was exciting work. I have a Type A personality and it was a good fit for me. I was trying to do some good by stopping drugs from coming into my country.”
Soileau’s responsibilities to both the National Guard and U.S. Customs meant that he spent significant time away from his family, as he was off piloting assignments from Iceland to Saudi Arabia to Central America. In late 2001, he was deployed for combat to Iraq as part of the Northern Watch campaign. That meant Soileau missed his daughter Jessica and son John Ben’s birthdays, his anniversary and even Christmas.
“I was gone a lot and it was difficult for my family and for myself,” Ben said. “But it was my job. I felt that I was serving my country and that was important.”
During those trying times, Soileau leaned on his faith and more in particular, his high school sweetheart turned wife Donna’s immense faith.
Soileau credits attending the Cursillo Movement in Prairie Ronde in 1986, a weekend of self-examination designed to awaken the moral conscience and ignite a desire to be in God’s grace, at helping him rededicate himself to God but he admits that it took years before he truly became a servant of God.
“That re-ignited our faith,” Ben said. “My wife and I both had a fire after that weekend but because of my responsibility to my jobs I wasn’t able to dedicate myself as much as my wife did.”
Even though Soileau may have felt that he wasn’t able to fully commit himself to God’s work, his wife though made sure that the family home always put faith first.
“My Cursillo affected me profoundly about my relationship to Jesus Christ,” said Donna, who taught religious education at St. Rosalie School in Harvey. “I attended seminary classes in New Orleans to further my spiritual knowledge. I made sure we participated in traditions that I was raised in. It was all putting my faith into action and keeping our faith as the center of our house.”
“My wife’s dedication to God played a role in keeping me attached to our faith,” Ben said. “Your faith helps you through the trials of any marriage. Without God in our lives it would have been difficult.”
The wear and tear of working two jobs eventually forced Soileau to make a change in his life. Soileau made the decision to join the National Guard full-time and leave the U.S. Customs Service. In 1999 he was promoted to Vice Wing Commander and after only three months he became Fighter Wing Commander, a post he held for three years. Soileau would become Brigadier General in 2007 and finally retired from duty in 2010.
“There was a point where it was becoming too difficult to do both jobs,” Ben said. “I had just received a promotion as a supervisor in Oklahoma City and likely was going to be promoted again and have to move to Washington D.C.”
The groundwork for returning back home to Ville Platte, and eventually becoming a deacon began back in 2000. The Soileaus decided to buy a house in their childhood town as part of the couple’s retirement plans.
Then in 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The Soileaus, who were living at Louisiana National Guard headquarters Jackson Barracks in the Lower 9th Ward, were flooded out like everyone else. That is when the Soileaus returned home to Ville Platte to stay.
But it was earlier that same year that Ben would be placed on the path to further serve God.
Both Soileau and his wife had been baptized, confirmed and married at Sacred Heart Church but the couple’s home was along the line between the two parishes. Early in 2005, Soileau’s mother Rose Emily Soileau fell deathly ill. Soileau called Sacred Heart to help provide last rites to his mother, but the priest at the time was out of town. So they called Father Randy Moreau at Our Lady Queen of All Saints.
“He came to the hospital and anointed my mother right there and within five seconds of that she died,” Ben said. “My wife and I just felt that God put us in this church for a reason.”
Once back in Ville Platte, Soileau felt the desire to serve the community. He ran for Evangeline Parish Clerk of Court in 2011 but lost a runoff to Randy Deshotel. At that same time, he also began to research what it took to become a deacon but he admits that at first he was slightly overwhelmed.
“The thought had entered my mind,” Ben said. “I wanted to do something for the community. At first I read up about it and I got a little afraid because I thought that I wasn’t worthy of holding that title.”
Fr. Guidry knew that Soileau was worthy of such a honorable title after taking over as priest at the church.
“It is rare that you meet someone that is a genuine nice person,” Fr. Guidry said. “He always has the right thing to do in the forefront of his mind. He has honor. He brought honor to his country and he will do that now to our church.”
Soileau spent four and half years attending classes every other weekend in Lafayette to become an ordained deacon. It was a long process, one in fact that saw only 23 of the original 46 men reach the end of the process.
Then on June 4th, Soileau was ordained by Bishop J. Douglas Deshotel as a Deacon to Our Lady Queen of All Saints Catholic Church in Ville Platte.
“It brings me so much joy,” said John’s wife of 43 years Donna. “To see him using the gifts that God has given him it is really beautiful.”
“It was a feeling of total peace and serenity,” said Ben of the ceremony. “I felt that this is what God wanted me to do. Had he told me not to do this I would have been fine with that because it would be his will.”