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The Lafourche Parish Council will vote on Tuesday to name its government complex after deceased former member Lindel Toups.
This will be the second time this year the council will consider naming a government building after Toups, who died last year. In March the council voted 3-5-1 against naming the parish’s library branch in Gheens after him.
Council Member Daniel Lorraine, who introduced both ordinances, said he has waited since council members, during discussion on renaming the library, floated the idea of creating a committee to find a more proper way to honor Toups. Since then, there has not been a committee meeting. Lorraine said renaming the complex after Toups would be a fitting honor for him.
“The man served 20 years, it’s in his district. It would be an honor. He devoted a lot of his time, and it would be something nice,” Lorraine said.
The vote will put the council in another position to properly evaluate Toups’s legacy. Toups served on the council for many years and was influential in his native Gheens. He was known to organize his own and help many others with charity events throughout his life. Toups also raised controversy with his combative tone, bringing a national spotlight on Lafourche Parish for his comment about Mexicans while talking about a Hispanic-language segment of the Golden Meadow library branch.
“They’re teaching Mexicans how to speak English,” Toups said. “Let that son of a b**ch go back to Mexico. There’s just so many things they’re doing that I don’t agree with…Them junkies and hippies and food stamps (recipients) and all, they use the library to look at drugs and food stamps (on the Internet). I see them do it.”
When asked what Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in Lafourche Parish should think of efforts to rename a building after someone who said those words, Lorraine said people should move past disagreeable words and focus on Toups’s larger legacy.
“There’s a lot of things that I hear people say or do that I don’t like. But if you’re going to get upset with everything’s that’s said or everything that people do, you’re going to be upset all the time,” Lorraine said.
