(With excerpts from the speech given at the library’s opening.)

My interest in everything culinary started as soon as I could hold a wooden spoon.  

I began collecting food-related stuff early and continued most of my life. That extensive collection included cookbooks, menus, pamphlets, booklets, other food/nutrition-related books – and memorabilia, like the My*T*Fine pudding package sporting an image of Howdy Doody! 

 I even went the food route with my education, studying and getting degrees in food science and nutrition and becoming a Registered Dietitian.

When I was getting ready to sell my cookbook-lined Connecticut home and move to Manhattan, I tried to find a home for my extensive library. Most of the 10K+ volumes were food-related, covering food, nutrition, institutional management, business and more.

Donating it as a whole was parament so the works could be used and appreciated. The University of New Haven, where I had taught, arranged to take it with a promise not to sell or keep it in storage. I was thrilled.

Fast forward seven years and most of my books were still in storage.  

Serendipitously, I sat next to New Orleans’ Liz Williams at Les Dames d’Escoffier’s annual conference in San Antonio in 2021. She was the linchpin in creating The John and Bonnie Boyd Hospitality & Culinary Library and getting this library to become the repository for all the works and archival materials of Dames past and present. The library is at Nunez Community College in Chalmette, Louisiana, outside New Orleans.

At lunch, I explained my frustration with the University of New Haven, where most of my collection remained in storage. Since 2015 when they packed them, the school had only processed a few thousand of the books. To be exact, 2869. I joked that, at this rate, I’d be dead before they finished.

With Liz’s help, we arranged to move a truckload of my papers, books and artifacts from the University of New Haven’s storage facility to this new library, creating the Bonnie Tandy Leblang Collection. That library opened this fall with a breaking of bread instead of a ribbon cutting.

I was honored to speak at the opening, surrounded by family.

I’ve become such an enthusiast of the library that they’ve asked — and I’ve accepted — a position on the National Food and Beverage Foundation’s board. That’s where I plan to focus on donations — materials and/or funds—to make our LDEI Collection’s repository the preeminent research facility, truly a destination for learning.

The SoFAB Research Center and the Boyd Hospitality & Culinary Library at Nunez Community College
3710 Paris Rd
Chalmette, LA 70043
Current Hours: Monday – Friday, 8 am – 4 pm
Call (504) 569-0405 for more information