Thursday, Feb. 17
February 17, 2011
Toll revenue not enough to make bond payments
February 21, 2011
Aurelia Pitre turned 90 on Monday. For her, February 2011 may have offered more memorable events in a short period of time than almost any other Valentine’s Day month had since her birth in 1921.
Her first Valentine’s Day and the months that followed featured a number of significant events. “The Kid” starring Charlie Chaplin opened in motion picture houses, the first transcontinental air mail flight took place from New York to San Francisco, the U.S. government sold all remaining buildings and equipment from the Gersterner Field Army Training base in Lake Charles, and that February President Woodrow Wilson left office as the nation anticipated Warren G. Harding taking the oath on March 4, 1921.
In 2011, Miss Aurelia’s birth month began routine enough. Then it rapidly changed with emotional highs and lows before her birthday, a day that most people celebrate every year with hearts, roses and candy.
On Feb. 2, Miss Aurelia was included in a feature story about the Terrebonne Parish Council on Aging Meals on Wheels program and was shown on the front of the Tri-Parish Times. “I made da paper, I made da paper,” she said that she told her family and friends. “She was so proud of that,” granddaughter Tara Pitre said.
Tragically, for Miss Aurelia, five days later an unseen and unknown electrical short in the attic of the modest, wooden, elevated, shotgun house she had lived in for 42 years ignited a blaze that destroyed the structure, claimed all her personal property and left in ashes mementoes and keepsakes she had collected over a lifetime, including the her most recent addition – the newspaper with her picture on the front page.
On Thursday, Miss Aurelia, with help of another granddaughter, Angela Soudlier, told how in 1969, she and her husband, Edward Pitre – a road construction worker for Terrebonne Parish who died in 2004 – moved from a rental property in Dularge and bought their home for $2,000.
There, at 603 Garnet, they raised nine children, waited out hurricanes, rose above floods, marked birthdays, welcomed to their world 26 grandchildren, 28 great-grandchildren and seven great-great grandchildren, marked Christmas, Mardi Gras, Easter and other holiday celebrations, saw their town grow only to be damaged with a downtown natural gas explosion, then expand again with business and industry. They even saw Houma and the region visited on different occasions by U.S. presidents.
Miss Aurelia said her favorite memories always involved family and meals that often featured either spaghetti or gumbo.
Today, she looks forward to those special occasions when she is taken out to eat by family to her favorite restaurant – Popeyes. “She loves the crawfish,” Soudlier said.
Over the years, the Pitre children grew to adulthood, neighbors rotated as some moved away and others arrived, and old friends and relatives passed from this life.
The ultimate change came when the little raised house, equipped with an electronic lift to help its remaining occupant who could no longer manage climbing stairs, burned. According to officials, the fire might have been building inside the attic and walls for a long period of time before being notice next to a kitchen stove.
“I went on my poach and yelled,’ My house it’s on fire, my house it’s on fire,'” Miss Aurelia said. A neighbor heard her cries, ran to her assistance and emergency crews were called.
Now, Miss Aurelia, who cared for her offspring as they grew into adulthood and had children of their own, has those generations of family returning her gestures of compassion. Plans are for her to live with her son, Edward Pitre Jr. in Bayou Blue.
“She’s always put everybody in front of herself,” Soudlier said of her mawmaw. Now, it is her family’s turn to do for Miss Aurelia and add to her memories as she makes the paper one more time.
Angela Soudlier reads the Tri-Parish Times to her grandmother, Aurelia Pitre. Miss Aurelia was included in a feature that the newspaper ran on Feb. 2. Five days later, fire destroyed her home and her belongings, including the newspaper with her picture on the front page of which her grandchildren say she took pride. CASEY GISCLAIR
