Kevin’s Cross

Kevin Curole was a shrimper’s shrimper, a man confident in his ability to overcome challenges of the sea. And like many successful a fisherman, he has had beside him a partner to make the picture whole.

Margaret Curole has always been there with Kevin, back when they had a big boat named “Heavy Metal,” keeping up the business end of endeavors, taking care of the kids and doing a lot of other things that allowed Kevin to do what he did with a clear head.

In their Galliano home, the Curoles made sure the kids understood their heritage, making them proud of the fishing traditions and all that go with them.

Unfortunately, what the forces of nature couldn’t do was accomplished by a difficult market about a decade ago, forcing the Curoles to make tough decisions. The Heavy Metal was sold. Kevin – as befits a man of the sea – got work skippering oilfield boats. And Margaret took her knowledge and love of humanity to levels nobody imagined, hooking up with organizations that promote sustainable fisheries and sustainable food supplies.

Kevin couldn’t get fishing out of his mind, and as he saw “for sale” signs going up on Bayou Lafourche boats above and below him, chose to use one of his many talents to mark the issue.

With a mask on his face and a torch in his hand Kevin went to work, with nobody in the family knowing quite what he was doing, shaping and welding a marker out of iron. When it was done, the cross stood 15 feet high, painted red, white and blue.

Icons of the fishing industry were incorporated as part of the cross. An old iron shrimp basket, a gill net, an oyster dredge that had belonged to Kevin’s mom, an old iron crab trap were among them.

“He went through this really dark phase when shrimping had gone to s—,” Margaret said.

Right there on the bank of Bayou Lafourche is where the cross remained, a testament to what once was and to the hope that in the future it might still be.

And then, last week, something happened.

A woman was driving a car down La. Highway 1 and, suddenly, it swerved. Neighbors said it was for sure headed right into the bayou, but it ran smack against Kevin’s iron cross with the crab trap, oyster dredge, gill net, shrimp basket and other things, pushing the cross down and dragging it underneath for a distance. But the impact was enough to slow the car down and, according to Margaret and the neighbors, that likely saved not only the life of the woman but the baby who was in the car, too.

Miraculously, there were no injuries, and everyone marveled at the miracle that was Kevin’s cross.

Margaret was quick to point out the butterfly effect, how if not for the trials of the shrimpers and others on this bayou and others there would never have been Kevin’s cross, and there would have been nothing to stop this woman from heading into the bayou.

It reminded her of an old paper cup she carried in her purse, not for any reason other than that she just never ditched it. And then a few years back she was at the shrine in Fatima, and there was an old woman passing water to those who needed it, and nobody had a cup but Margaret did, and used it to help out.

“My mama used to tell me don’t ever poo-poo the idea that something is there for a reason,” she said. “That’s how everybody gets a miracle.

“That cross may have been meant in God’s plan to save a baby’s life.”

To Margaret, it’s just one more way of showing how we are all somehow connected, even in ways that we might not realize until the day of the miracle occurs.