Fisherman’s friend

Sugar yielding high content, low crop weight
October 21, 2015
Chatman honored by peers
October 21, 2015
Sugar yielding high content, low crop weight
October 21, 2015
Chatman honored by peers
October 21, 2015

The buzz of voices was thick and noticeable as the cloud of white cigarette smoke rose toward the ceiling of the Ward Seven Citizen’s Center, a meeting hall on La. Highway 56 in Chauvin.

At the tables set up in long rows were men, mostly, but also a few women and children, come to discuss a matter of crucial importance, and as the people at the front of the room began to speak the hubbub calmed.

The year was 1995 and mostly the people seated on the metal folding chairs were members of commercial fishing families.


At issue was a proposed law that only affected a few of them directly. But the suggestion, and the reason for the meeting, was that it could affect a whole lot farther down the line.

Act 1316, the Louisiana Marine Resources and Conservation Act, would restrict the use of gill nets, a fishing tool that allowed the capture of speckled trout and certain other fish en masse. It included the buyback of such nets from fishermen and other provisions generally seen by a lot of folks on the bayou as distasteful.

The Coastal Conservation Association, a driving force behind the proposed law, viewed gillnets as “curtains of death” that indiscriminately killed fish. The commercial fishermen saw them as something vital to making a living. First they come for our nets, the ones who used them told the crowed, which included shrimpers and crabbers. Next they come for your trawls.


Unity among fishermen was therefore vital, various speakers said, in order for everyone’s best foot to be put forward.

I was new to southeast Louisiana when I witnessed this spectacle, unfamiliar with the issues and with the players alike. I took the best notes that I could, as it was my responsibility to tell all the people who hadn’t come to this meeting what had occurred.

What I recognized was that before my eyes and adjacent to my ears I was witnessing solidification of a movement, a moment which – whether one agrees or disagrees with the opinion presented – marks the desire of a people to fight what they see as an injustice against them.


The crowd at the Ward Seven auditorium was comprised of hard-working people, members of families who through many generations had built Terrebonne Parish and therefore Louisiana.

They paid for the colleges even though few if any had college educations.

So then there I was in 1995 with all the fishermen, and I saw a fellow among them who likely didn’t fish for a living. His trousers were not of denim or duck but those of a suit, held up by suspenders. His collared shirt was neat and pressed, the sleeves were rolled up.


This man stood up on a chair to speak, and all the people focused their attention on him.

In a deep, rich baritone and flat Cajun patois he spoke about the proposed law and how it was the most unjust legislation he had ever seen, and the people clapped and cheered and said thank you.

I asked a fisherman seated beside me who the man was.


“That’s Mr. Bobby,” the fisherman said, explaining that he was a state representative.

Over the years I came to personally know Bobby Bergeron, who later went on to become Terrebonne Parish President. I learned that the passion I saw that night was the product of a bayou son, a man who grew up at the bank of the Boudreaux Canal.

The gill net ban became law after Gov. Edwin Edwards chose to neither veto nor sign it, and a whole fishery died because of this and the spirit of the fishermen was damaged.


But it wasn’t for lack of a fight by Bobby Bergeron, who refused to forget where he came from.

A lot of people will remember Bobby Bergeron as the man who, for better or worse, moved the Terrebonne Parish Consolidated Government to what had been a bank building in downtown Houma, and likely some day they will put his name on it.

But I remember him as the man who told the fishermen in Chauvin that they had a friend in government.


I have no doubt that as soon as he stepped upon heaven’s threshold, the good lord Jesus Christ himself was first to give a welcome embrace, because everyone knows that he was a fisherman, and knows the value of a fisherman’s friend. And I have a strong feeling that if that’s all Bobby Bergeron was ever remembered for, he would be perfectly content and proud.

Fisherman’s friend