Troy Carter

Troy Carter’s chair was empty Tuesday morning at the Chicken Shack, marked with a large black bow.

Bouquets of flowers sat on a table beside Carter’s chair, along with blank index cards, pens and a box labeled “Words of Encouragement." Employees wore ribbon pins featuring Carter’s name.

Customers stopped when they walked in and looked toward the chair automatically, as if expecting to find him there.

For decades, Carter sat in that spot watching generations pass through the restaurant on North Acadian Thruway — greeting customers, talking with employees, answering phones, recording the restaurant’s legendary voicemail messages and helping raise generations of people who worked at Chicken Shack.

Carter died May 24. He was 61.

On Tuesday morning, the restaurant filled steadily with people coming to talk about him.

Que Serf stood near the memorial greeting customers and hugging former employees. One of her aunts had driven in to help her set up the display in Carter’s honor. Another aunt made the ribbons employees wore.

Serf came home from Houston two weeks ago after learning that Carter was very sick. She hasn’t left since.

She first met him when she was a teenager walking each morning to her job at Church’s Fried Chicken. Every day, she passed the Chicken Shack, and Carter noticed her.

“He told me he needed me working over here because he could tell I was dedicated,” she said.

For a short while, she worked both jobs before leaving Church’s and learning the Chicken Shack business under Carter — inventory, the register, how the restaurant operated from day to day.

She was still in high school.

“He taught me everything,” she said.

Carter spent nearly 47 years at the Chicken Shack across four locations, starting as a fry cook in the summer of 1979 when he was 15 years old.

He also became the restaurant’s most recognizable voice.

Every weekday morning around 8 a.m., Carter recorded the Chicken Shack voicemail message: daily specials delivered in the cadence of an auctioneer who had also been called to preach, followed by Scripture, encouragement, local reminders and observations about life and prayer.

The messages became part of the rhythm of Baton Rouge mornings for longtime customers who called as much to hear Carter as to hear the lunch menu.

His final recording came May 11, his last day at work.

That morning, he moved through the specials — smothered chicken, meatloaf, red beans, candied yams, homemade sweet potato pie and lemon chess pie — before reminding listeners to go vote.

Then, as always, he turned toward something larger.

“P.S.,” Carter said, “What an awesome and outstanding day it is to be alive and well and on the land of the living. God is truly smiling on us once again and done better to us than we thought.”

He continued:

“You can search all over and can't find anyone like our God. Well, the Lord allowed us to make it to another Monday, so we got a reason to give Him praise, honor and glory.”

He ended the message with:

“Whatever you do, and I mean whatever you do, keep God first. You're gonna need Him.”

After more than two decades of new weekday recordings, that final message is still on the Chicken Shack phone line.

The restaurant has decided to leave it there for now.

“Nobody can replace Troy Carter’s voice,” Serf said. “That voice came here every morning.”

Lindsey Robinson, who once worked under Carter before moving on to drive a garbage truck, stopped by Tuesday morning to pay his respects and order a four-piece dark meat with no sides.

“He showed me how to overcome my difficulties,” Robinson said. “Walking through sobriety and all that — he gave me a lot of words of encouragement and confidence.”

“I saw him every day,” Delpit said. “Every day. And when I got off work, I’d call him and we’d talk on the phone. We are going to miss Troy.”

On Tuesday morning, while regulars came and went, ordering chicken, dirty rice and writing messages of encouragement, Troy Carter’s chair sat empty beneath its black bow as 10-year-old Todd Delpit swept the restaurant’s floors.