For a person to truly love whey they do, they have to love the work first, and for Jerry Duhon of New Iberia, he enjoyed it all.

Working at the concession stand in the New Iberia Courthouse, a position that was handed down after his brother EJ, Duhon ran the concession stand from the mid-1980s until his death in the early 2000s. Duhon was born blind, but that never stopped him from performing his job, or from loving it.

Duhon sold everything from sandwiches, like club sandwiches, tuna salad and egg salad, to various candy, soda, coffee and cigarettes and was a hit with his customers each and every day. He would sometimes even go to Meche’s in the mornings and buy donuts to sell to customers.

His daughter Shannon said his love for his work started with the people he served all those years at the courthouse.

“I think it was the customers,” Shannon said. “He enjoyed interacting with them and socializing. Plus it enabled him to feel like he was contributing to society. He may have been blind, but he never saw or used his handicap as a crutch.”

A constant worker his whole life, Duhon was always serving others.

His other passion, aside from his job at the courthouse every day, was his music. If he wasn’t at the courthouse, he was playing in a band or tuning pianos.

His love of both his work and music left a mark in the community, his daughter said.

“I think of his warm heart and loving personality as well as his passion for music,” she said. “He loved playing the piano. He passed that gift on to me. He taught me that no job will ever be a job if it’s something you love doing and it makes you happy.”

Shannon Duhon said she would like for her father to be remembered as someone who truly left a legacy for others.

“I just want my daddy to be remembered as an amazing, loving, talented man who loved his job, loved the people he interacted with and even played music for them because it made him so happy,” she said.

She shares a love for music with her father. It’s something he always encouraged in her.

“He was my everything,” Shannon said. “He was my world and I would give anything to have him alive again. I miss him so much, but I keep his memory alive in my heart by singing because he always encouraged me to pursue music.”

It could have been of the convenience of location, or it could even have been a safe place, but Duhon always loved what he did and why he did it.

“He’d interact with people and he felt he had a family in all of them,” Shannon said. “And I know that if he had the chance, he would thank every single one of them for making his time there worth working there.”