The body of a Baton Rouge pastor missing since May 2 after a boat accident has been found in the Gulf of Mexico, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries announced Saturday afternoon.
85-year-old Donald Tabb was found about 10:30 a.m. near the Southwest Pass, roughly 10 miles from where he was reported missing.
The U.S. Coast Guard had suspended its search Friday for the founding pastor of LSU’s Chapel on the Campus. He’d been missing since the accident on the southern tip of Plaquemines Parish.
“We know that this body was but a vessel and not the essence of Donald Tabb and that Donald Tabb’s eternal soul and spirit is more alive today than ever in his life,” said Ben Jones, the Tabb family pastor.
Tabb was headed out to fish with two friends at a spot in the Gulf of Mexico known as the “Mud Humps” when a large wave near the area of Port Eads and South Pass capsized their 27-foot boat, authorities have said. Tabb directed friend Patrick Anderson to find their other companion, 86-year-old Jack Frey, and take him to shore, those close to the group have said.
Anderson did. But Frey, of Magnolia, Texas, had drowned; and Anderson could no longer see Tabb when he turned his attention to the overturned boat.
Tabb’s body has been placed in the custody of the Plaquemines Parish Coroner’s Office to determine a cause of death.
“Donald Sheppard Tabb … was launched from this world to Heaven on May 2nd, 2018, from one of his favorite places, the junction of the Mississippi River and the Gulf Of Mexico, while doing one of his favorite things, fishing, together with his lifelong friend Jack Frey,” Tabb’s obituary reads.
The Chapel on the Campus, which Tabb founded, will hold a “celebration and remembrance” service for Tabb on May 14 at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. The public is invited to the service, which will run from 10 a.m. to noon, with a lunch reception to follow at The Chapel on the Campus.
The service calls for casual attire, “cowboy boots preferred.”
Tabb, born in Albany, Texas, grew up on a large cattle ranch where he “learned the Cowboy Way,” according to his obituary. He attended Texas A&M and won the bull riding championship there in 1950.
He was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army after his 1953 graduation and served in the 82nd Airborne and was an Army Ranger. He became involved in ministry worked at the Lost Valley Ranch in Colorado before he returned to Texas and married his wife of 60 years, Mary Alice Noyes Tabb.
Tabb eventually joined the Billy Graham Crusades and trained many of the counselors for the crusades for seven years. He and his wife moved to Baton Rouge in 1970 as part of his work with Graham and they stayed there while Tabb developed the Chapel on the Campus.
Though Tabb became pastor emeritus at the church in 2001, he stayed on in many roles, including the founder of the Jabez Foundation, a disaster relief and scholarship ministry.
“Donald was a renowned evangelist, preacher, teacher, story-teller, and Cajun raconteur,” Tabb’s obituary reads. “He loved people, was merciful and longsuffering and believed the best of his friends and parishioners; he loved preaching the Eternal Gospel of His Lord Jesus Christ and leading people to saving faith.”
Tabb had five children and multiple grandchildren.
