My sincere appreciation for the invitation to share with you, 1962 DHS grads, highlights of my life and to reminisce with you a bit on our passage through that school-of-old which stood on sacred lands beyond compare where river echoes fall.   It is a cherished privilege of mine to have served students of this same school, first as Industrial Arts Teacher and then as counselor.  I am privileged to have also served the St. Charles Parish Public School System  as Supervisor of Child Welfare and Attendance and to have supervised at the same time the areas of guidance and counseling, special education, art and industrial arts.  I then served as assistant superintendent, first assistant superintendent and, finally, as Superintendent of the St. Charles Parish Public School System, from which position I retired in 1989.

The picture at left above, evidently taken in the Board Room of the St. Charles Parish School Board, is an interesting one.  I believe Dick Keller had retired by then and was just there on a needling mission.  The occasion was evidently focused on careers.  But I have no idea what the high-powered discussion was all about.  I would wager a bet, however, that Dick had just finished needling R. K. Smith about something and was waiting for his reaction;  R. K. on the other hand was pretending not to have heard a thing, so interested was he in that paper he was holding; and Yours Truly had evidently discovered a career more appealing to him than that of assistant superintendent.

 And now, for a little bit on my prehistoric past.  Once upon a time, long, long, longggggggggggggg ago I was born.  That was three-quarters of a century plus two years ago, to be more exact.  Or to be even more precise, I was born on February 25, 1925.  Three events which occurred in a relatively close time span were to dramatically affect my life and the lives of my contemporaries.  The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and the  Great Depression which followed soon thereafter just about put under a rather successful business my father had in the form of a country grocery store and the purchasing and selling of furs and Spanish moss.  These were hard times when even food and clothing were hard to come by.  Then, when I was about in the sixth grade the gathering storms of war began to build up on the horizon.   We, the children of my time, especially we boys, followed the news of war and threats of war with great interest through the Junior Scholastic Magazine Mrs. Elenor Broussard had us report on in Current Events each week, and also less often through the Movie Tone News Reels at the local theatre.  A powerful, melodious voice always introduced the Movie Tone News Reel with the words, “Time Marches On,” each word enunciated with great drama, the voice lingering on each word, sufficient to send shivers down the spine if you had any feel at all for the spoken word.  And unfortunately, most of the news at that period of time was about war and threats of war.  But the words, “time marches on” were to be more prophetic for us than we would have ever dreamed at the time.  For, indeed, time did march on for us too, and within a few short years we were to become part of the action rather than mere spectators of this action through the Movie Tone News Reel.  My friend, John Borrell, who had more opportunity to go to the movies than most of us did, was particularly enthralled with all the action, and he would regale us less fortunate boys with all the action taking place.  Ironically, he was to find his way in the infantry to the invasion of Italy and there lose his life in some of the action he had been so enthralled with.

My brother Lloyd was very badly hurt in France.  I served in the Army Airways Communication System on Saipan and Guam.

 But I had promised just a “little bit” about my prehistoric past.  So let me move fast forward to a less distant past.  After return from the service and completion of college, I taught at a trade school in Jennings, Louisiana in a government program for returning veterans.  In addition to my regular duties of teaching carpentry and cabinet making, I did volunteer work on my own time for the church, for the community and in one notable case for an individual.   The people I lived with had a young grandson, probably around 12 or 13, who was very interested in having a small outboard motor boat, and I was approached to see if I would build him one, the painting to be left to the father and son to do.  I had never built a boat before, but I took on the project, and you will see the results below with Yours Truly and the boy’s father standing by.  The experience I gained building Gabby was to serve me well in my later DHS assignment where boats were among the popular projects.

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