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The corner office sits empty and will stay that way.
Gayle Benson has no plans to move into the space previously occupied by her late husband, Tom Benson, the patriarch of the New Orleans Saints and Pelicans. For the sake of posterity, she plans to leave it the way Benson left it at the teams' Metairie headquarters.
"That's sacred territory," she said during an interview Wednesday (April 11) in her ornate and immaculately designed second-floor office, one door down the hall from the one her husband occupied for almost three decades. "We don't ever want to change it."



While Gayle Benson won't literally take the place of her late husband at Saints-Pelicans headquarters, she already has done so figuratively and formally.
As the sole heir to Tom Benson's $2.2 billion estate, she is now the richest, most powerful woman in Louisiana and one of four female principal owners in both the NFL and NBA, respectively.
The timing of her succession has been bittersweet. Since taking over last month, Benson has seen the Pelicans qualify for the Western Conference playoffs for only the second time in seven years and watched her horse stable's top 3-year-old colt, Lone Sailor, place second in the Louisiana Derby and earn a spot in the starting gate for the Kentucky Derby.
"Tom Benson's up there (in heaven) working his magic," she said.



She has kept a low profile in the wake of Tom Benson's death. Other than attending official league meetings and Pelicans games, she has done little publicly. She had dinner with longtime friend, former WWL-TV anchor Angela Hill, on Sunday and attended a charity event at City Park on Wednesday.
And when she does venture out, it is rarely without company. Just as she and Tom Benson were nearly inseparable during their 14-year marriage, she is almost always accompanied by one or more of the organization's tenured team of senior executives and/or their spouses.
"I'm kind of struggling," she said. "I don't feel like I want to be out celebrating."
She plans to attend each game in the Pelicans' Western Conference playoff series against the Portland Trail Blazers, starting with Game 1 on Saturday in Portland. She and team president Dennis Lauscha will make the cross-country flight to Oregon on Friday night after attending the NBA Board of Governors meeting in New York City.
She also plans to attend the Kentucky Derby in Louisville on May 5, but only after conducting a work retreat at her Paris, Kentucky, horse farm in the days preceding the race.
"It's been very tough," she said. "It's been uplifting in many ways with our fans and the way we we've been received. Seeing all the fans at the funeral was just overwhelming and very humbling to me. It's fueled me energy-wise."


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Rugby Saint II

That is an article that I hope is going to come true.