Each week, the Shreveport-Bossier Journal’s Tony Taglavore takes to lunch a local person – someone who is well-known, successful, and/or influential, and asks, “What’s Your Story?”
By TONY TAGLAVORE, Journal Services
He was eight years old and barely awake on that July morning in 1989. The young boy walked out of his bedroom and saw the church pastor sitting in a red chair, waiting on the child, and his sister, who a day earlier had celebrated her seventh birthday.
“The pastor read from Ecclesiastes,” the now-almost 45-year-old remembered. ‘There’s a time to be born and there’s a time to die.’ He explained that yesterday, it was my dad’s time to die – to go home and be with Christ.”
The son, whose mother owned a Shreveport delicatessen, would live the rest of his life without a father. At least without his biological father. Not long after the boy’s father passed, his grandfather died.
“I was angry at God – very angry at God. There were times when I would weep in my bed, and yell, and even curse at God. I would ask, ‘Why did you do this?’ I never seemed to get any sort of answer.”
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t being heard.
“God likes to be silent a lot of times because he’s working on us when he is silent.
25-and-a-half years later, the young boy who “hated” God became an ordained minister.
“God wanted me to have these experiences because what he was building up in me was empathy. He was building up in me a facet of my life that would be beneficial in ministry that I would not have otherwise had if these experiences had not happened. He was very much being a father to me.”
Reverand Patrick Fertitta told me that story, and his story, during lunch at Fertitta’s Delicatessen, a place Patrick helps his mother run. Patrick had the Godfather sandwich, loaded with Alligator Italian Sausage which he created, marinara sauce, and mozzarella cheese, all on muffaletta bread. I went with the Original Muffy, which was developed by Patrick’s grandfather in 1960. It had Cotto salami, Danish ham, mozzarella cheese, mustard, and olive mix.
“I remember riding my Big Wheel trike into the customer’s shins,” Patrick said of growing up in the restaurant. I remember my grandfather always yelling at me to stop running in here. Either I was going to get hurt or I was going to hurt somebody.”
Patrick began school at Kerr Elementary in Bossier City, then transferred to Evangel Christian Academy. Despite his size, and despite Evangel’s reputation as a football school, Patrick chose to play in the band.
“I think that broke (head football coach) Pastor Denny’s heart quite a bit. You see my size. I’ve always been a big guy. He wanted me on the offensive and defensive line. I wanted my knees.”
Patrick’s knees were safe while he played the trumpet, and in his senior year, Patrick became a drum major. He graduated from Centenary College with an Economics degree, and hopes of becoming a stockbroker. But fear got in the way.
“What’s it called? Imposter Syndrome? When you know you know the material and you’re good at it, but you feel like you’re inadequate? I was always terrified to take the exams.”
So, Patrick tried his hand as a landman, and an insurance salesman.
“I was miserable. I was running from my calling.”
But one afternoon, Patrick’s calling caught up with him. Patrick was alone in the deli. “I was sitting right there at that table,” he said, pointing. “I had this thought come to me that I had never thought of before. It was the answer to all those prayers, all those angry tirades I had at God while growing up. That thought was that God took my dad when he did because (God) wanted to be my father. He wanted me to go through the things I was going through because he was preparing me for what he wanted me to do. He was preparing me with heartache. He was preparing me with being around death.”
A week later, Patrick had a chance meeting with a vicar, a holy representative of the Lutheran church. They talked for four hours.
“I had so many questions, and he had answers.”
Patrick eventually became a Lutheran. Five years later, the amount of time a new Lutheran must wait, Patrick was off to Seminary school in St. Louis. Fast-forward another five years, and Patrick was ordained, fulfilling his cousin’s prophecy the day Patrick was born.
“She told my mom, ‘Patrick has a call on his life. He’s going to serve the Lord in some way, and I believe it’s going to be in ministry.”
That “call” led Patrick to six and a half years as pastor of a church on the University of Alabama’s campus. “An LSU fan, of all people…Like (the apostle) Paul, you’re going to be all things to all people.”
But during Covid, Patrick got two calls – one from his mother, and one from the heavens.
“I could see God was preparing me for some sort of move, but I didn’t know what.”
Patrick’s stepfather had become ill and could no longer help at the deli. Faced with his mother having to close the eatery which had been in the Fertitta family since 1927, Patrick resigned from his pastor position and came home.
“God took me back to the 10 Commandments – Honor your Father and Mother.”
Patrick told me his decision was easy. But he still has questions.
“There are times when I feel very, very beaten up. Sometimes I do question God. ‘Why did you take me out of ministry and put me right here again?’ Then, I have to pull myself back and realize God is in control of all this.”
So, these days, instead of preaching to a congregation, you will find the reverend making Muffy’s. But you will also find a self-described renaissance man. How many clergymen do you know who are an author of three (and soon to be four) books, a striving-to-be-expert in artificial intelligence, a racehorse owner (One of his horses won the 2023 Kentucky Derby, and another horse won almost $15 million before being retired), occasional gambler, online seller of food products under the name Padre Fertitta, and is happy to have a Scotch and Soda with you? (By the way, Patrick recently took and passed the investment advisor exam of which he was so afraid.)
“Luther (founder of the Lutheran church) believed God gives us everything in this world as gifts for us to enjoy. To honor God with, as well . . . . As long as you do not take those things and make them Gods to you.”
I wondered if Patrick was content behind a food counter instead of a pulpit. So, I asked him.
“I won’t be content with life until I am in the arms of my savior. Until then, whatever God wants me to experience, whatever God wants me to do, however God wants me to approach that . . . . I may learn something that literally I have no use for except that I want to learn it.”
With the lunch crowd gone, and assuming Patrick had scheduled a lesson on how to fly a plane (which he would like to do), or had something else to do that you wouldn’t expect from a reverend, I asked my final question. As always, what is it about his life that could be inspirational to others?
Patrick answered as quickly as the time it takes for one of his horses to break from the starting gate.
“Trust in God and be curious. It doesn’t matter what it leads to. As long as it leads to you exploring this wonderful world and this wonderful creation that God has given us, and you explore it with him.”
Not a bad answer from someone who once hated God.
Do you know someone with a story? Email SBJTonyT@gmail.com.
The Journal’s weekly “What’s Your Story?” series is sponsored by Morris & Dewett Injury Lawyers.