Human Flower Project
Orrington, MAINE USA
Murrieta, CALIFORNIA USA
Princeton, MAINE USA
Thursday, August 03, 2006
‘Orchids to You Bob’
Who was ‘Wm Helis’ and why did he rate a flower arrangement as big as a catamaran?
Impression-making arrangement
Photo: Louisiana State Museum Archives
Senior New Orleans readers (may we have some!) and historians of the U.S. petrochemical industry perhaps know the name ‘William Helis.’ We did not, until encountering this photo in the Louisiana State Museum’s fabulous photo archive—an immense flower arrangement decorated with his name.
William G. Helis was an oil tycoon, which explains something if not everything.
Helis “came to the US from Greece in the 1920s and began to make his fortune dabbling in oil plays in California before turning his attention to Louisiana. Legend has it, says Jay Cooke, current senior petroleum engineer at the venerated independent, that after a major had used its entire budget for an area on what turned out to be two dry holes, Helis paid 100% of the costs for a third well in return for 50% of the take. The resultant well was the Black Bay discovery well that is still flowing after having so far delivered more than a quarter billion barrels of oil.”
The Helis Company, we learn, is still based in New Orleans, with offices on the 9th floor of the Whitney Bank Building after 60 years. Clearly, this item was brought up in the service elevator.
In orchid script
Even for what must have been the top florist in the city, spelling in flowers—like oil exploration—is tricky business. We first read the name at bottom as “Nelis” then “Kelis,” and it took shrinking the image down considerably to descry that the heap of greenery and blossoms spells out “ORCHIDS TO YOU BOB.”
William Helis wasn’t the recipient of these flowers but the sender. Natch. Who but an oil baron could have afforded this?
We’d appreciate hearing from our florist friends about problems of orthography. And we’ll forward this post on to the Helis Company. Because now we must know who Bob was and what he did (drill that third well?) to warrant such a spectacle.