Dr. Louis Vitalien “Victor” Rochette, unknown date

Kerouac’s Characters: L. V. Rochette

By Kurt Phaneuf

 According to his granddaughter Lucille (Parthenais) Sullivan, Dr. Louis Vitalien “Victor” Rochette (1862-1930) delivered an estimated 10,000 babies for Lowell’s Franco-American mothers during his four-decade career.  Arguably his most famous delivery was Jack Kerouac, whose birth Rochette oversaw at Leo and Gabrielle’s Lupine Road home in Centralville on March 12, 1922, “at five o’clock in the afternoon of a red-all-over suppertime.”  Kerouac describes the circumstances of his birth in this fanciful reimagining from Doctor Sax (1959), wherein Dr. Rochette is renamed “Dr. Simpson”:

“Young Doctor Simpson who later became tragic tall and grayhaired and unloved, snapping his—“I think everything she is going to be alright, Angy,” he said to my mother who’d given birth to her first two, Gerard and Catherine, in a hospital.

“Tank you Doctor Simpson, he’s fat like a tub of butter–mon ti n’ange …” Golden birds hovered over her and me as she hugged me to her breast; angels and cherubs made a dance…”

Return Of A Birth for Jean Louis ‘Keroach’ Signed By L.V. Rochette

A native of Saint-Barthélemy, QC, and the son of St. Lawrence River steamboat captain Norbert Rochette and housewife Louise Malboeuf, Rochette received his early education at Berthier and Joliet Collèges (“collèges” in this case referring to the parish equivalent of middle and high school), completing his medical studies at Victoria University in Montreal in 1887. He married Quebec native Marie Lafontaine in 1888, the couple eventually having fourteen children.  Only six survived to adulthood.

Arriving in Lowell on October 3, 1893, Rochette signed his “Declaration of Intention” in 1912, finalizing his petition for naturalization as an American citizen in 1916.  He certainly didn’t wait for citizenship to render an impact on his adopted home–Rochette opened a successful private practice at 730 Merrimack Street in the heart of “Little Canada” in 1893, directly across the street from the recently-constructed St. Jean Baptiste Catholic Church.  Though Dr. Rochette was best known for delivering babies, he dealt with an eclectic, challenging cross-section of medical emergencies during his years of practice.  A representative sampling of those cases can be found in the pages of The Lowell Sun during the early decades of the century.

Cross Section of Dr. Rochette’s Cases from The Lowell Sun

But what of Kerouac’s curious characterization of Rochette as “tragic tall and grayhaired and unloved” in the above passage from Doctor Sax?  The disquieting answer to this question rests in events that unfolded in early March 1905.  During a difficult childbirth, Rochette’s 36-year old wife Marie lost twin daughters on consecutive days; the first child dying on the morning of Sunday, March 19 while the second perished early on Monday the 20th.  Adding to the family’s litany of trauma, Marie herself succumbed on Tuesday, March 21, under what The Lowell Sun describes as “distressingly sad circumstances.”  One can only imagine how Dr. Rochette–a man who’d safely delivered countless children into the world–was able to cope with such a deep, relentless impaction of loss.  Marie and the children were returned to her native Quebec and are interred in the parish Cimetière de St-Barthélemy, nearly six hours from Lowell.

Despite his grief, Rochette had children to raise and patients to assist.  For the next quarter-century, he remained the go-to obstetrician for the French-Canadian community.  Illness forced his retirement in 1929, the same year of his brother Stephen’s death.

Louis’s Brother Stephen Rochette, Founder of Lowell Motor Mart

Trained as a pharmacist, Stephen/Stephane Rochette (1868-1929) was another preeminent Franco-American citizen of the Mill City; he became one of the pioneers of auto sales in the Merrimack Valley, running Lowell Motor Mart for decades. Upon their deaths, both Louis and Stephen Rochette were laid to rest in St. Joseph Cemetery, Chelmsford.

Louis V. Rochette’s Grave at St. Joseph Cemetery, Chelmsford

In a moment of poetic symmetry Jack would likely have relished, the home of L.V. Rochette–the man who brought Jack Kerouac into the world–was located directly across the street from the house of worship where Jack was guided into the afterlife by Fr. Armand “Spike” Morissette.  The Rochette home was razed in the 1990s though the vacant lot on which it once stood provides splendid views of the future Jack Kerouac Center at the former St. Jean Baptiste Church.

Jack Kerouac’s Funeral, October 24, 1969 – Dr. Rochette’s former home at 730-732 Merrimack is in the background behind the VW microbus

For those interested in learning more about key figures in Jack Kerouac’s Duluoz Legend, please consider attending the free walking tours and guest lectures at the 2025 Lowell Celebrates Kerouac Festival.  The novel Doctor Sax and references to figures like Dr. L.V. Rochette figure prominently in the “Ghosts of the Pawtucketville Night” tour on Sunday, October 10th at 5:00 P.M.  For more details, please visit the official festival schedule at

https://lowellcelebrateskerouac.org/events/lowell-celebrates-kerouac-2025-fall-festival-oct-9-13/