Closing the file after 47 years

I. Robert “Bobby” Boudreaux mentioned that he did not understand why everyone seemed to be making such a big fuss after he announced his retirement plans last Tuesday. It was just another day of work, as it had been since the 79-year-old clerk of courts began working in the Terrebonne Parish Courthouse as a young man. “This has been my life,” he said.

“This is a pretty hard decision and it didn’t come easy,” Boudreaux said as he sat in a first floor office where he has served in his current capacity for 12 terms beginning in 1964. But his career of researching, documenting, organizing and recovering legal forms began earlier than that. After graduating from Terrebonne High School, Boudreaux began work in the clerk of courts office as a deputy clerk on June 1, 1950 and eventually became a fixture. “I grew up in the office,” he said. “This is all I’ve known.”

When Boudreaux started his career, Harry Truman was president, World War II had ended just five years earlier and the Korean War broke out the month he started work. Earl Long was governor of Louisiana in 1950 and consolidation of the City of Houma and Terrebonne Parish governments was still three decades away.

“I got to looking at the calendar and doing some arithmetic,” Boudreaux said. “I got to thinking, ‘If not now, when?'”

Boudreaux noted that despite technology that included going from manual typewriters to computers and use of the Internet, along with other modern additions, such as central air conditioning to the courthouse that was only 12 years old when he started working there, not much has altered.

“The main change is the volume,” Boudreaux said. “There are a large number of attorneys. That generates a large number of papers. It generates a large number of litigation. All those things have to be processed.”

When Boudreaux was first elected to his current job, Terrebonne Parish only had one judge. Now there are five, who all depend on the clerk of courts office to process cases.

The clerk of courts is responsible for the filing of real estate sales and purchases, birth certificates, marriage licenses and death certificates. This behind-the-scenes office also conducts elections. “I graduated from the cans to the technological machines we have today,” Boudreaux said. “I was fortunate enough to watch all that happen.”

Boudreaux is not an attorney but explained that during his years in the office much of his work was mastered by doing. “You got to process them papers. You got to either file them or see that they get served and go where they go. All those papers pass through here whether civil or criminal.”

Boudreaux said the custom of swearing in elected officials and judges has resulted in countless thousands of people who were able to begin their work only after he made it officials with a ceremony of reciting select words. “Everybody who is elected every four years, all the parish officers have to be sworn,” he said. “I was fortunate enough that they asked me to swear them.”

Even the influence of language and culture has changed over time with Boudreaux being in the Terrebonne Parish Courthouse to offer his skills.

Boudreaux said that his coming to the clerk of courts office was immediately rewarding for him. “It was a good fit right away because the duties and responsibilities of the clerk are a lot. It takes up your time and all of the public. [People] expect you to know what you are doing. I never had any inclination to do anything else because I really, truly enjoy what I do.”

Courthouses are often ominous places for the general public. That was one area Boudreaux found himself working to change early. “When I first started out people were coming in here that only spoke French,” he said. “They were not comfortable. It was my French background in family and at school that I was able to establish a relationship and make it a more comfortable situation for them.”

Success in office, Boudreaux said, came as he surrounded himself with people who have been caring and having a department that does not depend on the judges or any government body.

“The future is going to be whatever it brings,” Boudreaux said. “The challenge will be trying to keep up and still have time to put all these things that go on. People need to feel comfortable when they come in,” Boudreaux said. “It is a service office. All you can do is familiarize yourself with all of the things people expect of you. That means you have to be knowledgeable of all the things that go on.”

Boudreaux’s term officially ends June 30, 2012. Judges with the 32nd District Court were asked to comment on working with Boudreaux. One judge’s assistant explained that all would decline based only on the thought that Boudreaux could still change his mind and run for a 13th term and they did not want to appear as endorsing one candidate over another.

Some public office holders at the Terrebonne Parish courthouse contend that having had Boudreaux there for more than half a century and thinking of him leaving is worth making a fuss.

Terrebonne Clerk of Courts Bobby Boudreaux shows how even with advances in technology, legal documents are basically the same in 2011 as they were when he first began working with processing and filing records after high school in 1950. MIKE NIXON