Edeltraud Bourgeois
June 8, 2017
TRMC to host youth basketball clinic
June 8, 2017
I remember the year was 1968. The date I un-remember! (Forgive me, dear departed teachers!)
Dick Guidry and I were at the Capitol, and the House was in session. He beckoned me over. “Terrebonne Representative Dickie Talbot and I hope to accomplish something big for our parishes today. Meet us at Bob & Jake’s (Baton Rouge’s favorite watering hole and steak house for politicians) and I’ll tell you about it,” he said.
“Good,” I thought, “a free meal”
Dick was in his second run as Lafourche Parish’s State Representative, having served from 1952 to 1956 and elected again in 1964. We were best friends since grade school and had weathered many political campaigns. He knew the ropes, and Dickie was in his first run and took advice from his new friend.
As I arrived at their table, the two were high fiving and fist bumping and … well, they would have been but those forms of victory and success were not yet in fashion or vogue. I could tell, however, they were very happy and wearing big smiles.
Dick spoke, “Lee, Dickie and I introduced a bill today that if successful will someday keep South Lafourche and South Terrebonne citizens with dry feet in their homes year round.”
What could I say? I held up my glass and echoed the immortal words of Dean Martin, “I’ll drink to that.”
The bill was the South Louisiana Tidal Water Control Levee District which, when funded with local taxpayers, state and federal grants would have built ring levees around the southern, most vulnerable areas of both parishes. The two Richards had high hopes, but it was not meant to be. “The best laid plans of mice and men, often go astray.”
Richard “Dickie” Talbot died in a car wreck in Lafourche Parish on his way home from Baton Rouge and the dream died, too.
Dick Guidry: “I called all of the local Terrebonne elected officials, but no one I talked to was interested in picking up where Dickie Talbot left off. I went to the legislature a month later and created The South Lafourche Levee District. I took Terrebonne out.”
Later bills penned by Guidry granted the District hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Atchafalaya and Lafourche Levee districts in annual payments, $200,000 in federal money to start work on the 40 mile Larose to Golden Meadow levee, a board of great individuals through the years that Dick would later call the “best board in Louisiana.” Terrebonne parish received a one-time sum of $100,000 for their exclusion from the district.
In South Lafourche, the citizens voted to tax themselves, and continuous requests from the state and feds brought millions more. Dick Guidry lived to see the project completed. (“But as the water rises and erodes the land, the levees must rise and the flood gates manned.” Levee manager Windell Curole said that. It’s his report. I just made it rhyme.)
On April 10, 2017 the Levee District named their headquarters the “Richard ‘Dick’ Guidry Building Complex.”
“It was altogether fitting and proper that they do this.” (I’m paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln, but it’s rightly so.)
There were obstructions to building the levees. Some land owners filed lawsuits for more money. Some even jumped in the canal to stop construction, which might have delayed it long enough for Hurricane Juan to find an unfinished gap and flood us all again. Hurricane Hilda had flooded me in 1964, so I remodeled, enlarged and lifted my house above the flood level. Dick, living across Bayou Lafourche from me, was built on a ground level slab and flooded more. He laughed it off. “I was on my knees washing the floor after another flood when I looked through my picture window and saw a fish staring back at me.
When my family asked my advice about the levee district buying rights-of-way, they said other land owners were asking for more money. I told them, “Nail that contract to the table until every family member has signed and see that it doesn’t fly away. Take whatever they offer. This is our hope for the future.” They signed.
BYE NOW!
Today, Historical Columnist Leroy Martin remembers the early days of storm protection in Lafourche Parish and the early days when Lafourche’s Levee District was born. Martin also tells old stories about former politician Dick Guidry and some of the tales of his career.
