Courthouse lockdown served as a dry run for change in Terrebonne
February 4, 2016
Krewe de Bonne Terre moves parade to Sunday
February 5, 2016
Leaders from the Bayou Region looked back on Charlotte Randolph’s time as a Lafourche Parish President.
Leadership Lafourche held a reception Thursday night honoring Randolph’s 12 years in office. Those she worked with on the parish, state and national level joined Randolph in reflecting on the achievements and challenges during Randolph’s tenure.
Randolph said the parish was in need of fresh ideas when she made the call to run for the highest position in Lafourche.
“This parish was in dire straits, and some of the people here were involved in the process of attempting to recruit different people to run for office. Because we felt there was a need, just for a different direction. The more we talked about it, the more we thought about it, the more it felt like something I wanted to do,” she said.
Randolph’s allies in Lafourche spoke about her drive to push the parish forward. Ted Falgout, former executive director of the Greater Lafourche Port Commission, said that he and Randolph’s schedules intertwined heavily in pursuit of projects in the area.
“We got involved in more things together with a growing port, the La. 1 project, the coastal restoration initiatives and dozens of other projects. Anything that we thought was good for this community, you would see Charlotte there,” Falgout said.
Congressman Garret Graves was in attendance, and he mentioned the fight Randolph brought to coastal restoration in Lafourche. The congressman recalled her reaction when the Coastal Restoration and Protection Authority released its master plan in 2008.
“You were tough. You were tough on me on occasion. I remember when we released our Coastal Master Plan, she called us a few choice things.
It was going through like, ‘President Randolph, we’ve already spent hundreds of millions of dollars, you have the second most of any parish.’ She said, ‘See! So there’s room for improvement!”‘
The dinner event was not just a time to focus on accomplishments, though. Randolph and guests reflected on the most challenging times of her tenure, including the back-to-back hurricanes of Gustav and Ike in 2008. Randolph recalls her team hunkering down in Raceland when friends from the federal government came to alert them that their building’s roof was not in the best shape.
“The National Guard came running in saying that the roof had collapsed. Well, like idiots, we started running back. We were going to go fix the roof, OK. National Guard is getting the heck out of there, and we were going to fix the roof. It was actually amazing we had that reaction to it,” Randolph said.
The Lafourche leaders left Raceland and commandeered the old Wal-Mart building in Mathews, only for a new disaster to rear its ugly head.
“We commandeered that building that weekend, and then Ike hit. Just when we thought we were settling in, we had another storm come along,” Randolph said.
Another dark period for the parish was the BP oil spill in 2010. During the disaster, the U.S. Coast Guard had 1 million feet of “boom,” temporary floating barriers used to contain oil spills, according to Graves. However, the Coast Guard wanted to split the boom equally among all four states, even as the majority of the oil was headed toward the Louisiana coast. Graves said he and Randolph had other ideas.
“The coast guard says what we’re going to do to be fair, is we’re going to give one quarter each to all of the four gulf states. You could have handcuffed us and it wouldn’t have worked. We just went nuts, because all the oil was coming to us, our coastline was longer than all the other states combined,” Graves said.
The former parish president recalled when she met with President Obama during the oil spill crisis, just after he announced the six-month moratorium on oil exploration in the Gulf.
“I’m thinking to myself, do I take this moment to say ‘How’s the wife and kids?’
You know, the social stuff. Or do I take this opportunity to try make our case?” Randolph said. “He had just announced the moratorium on oil and gas right before he got here. I gave him a compliment. I said, ‘You’re a brave man, because this is not the place you want to be.'”
At the end of the night, Leadership Lafourche announced that the organization was creating a Charlotte Randolph scholarship for their program. According to Leadership Lafourche organizer Lin Kiger, the scholarship will be on an as-needed basis and should pay for $300 of the $800 total tuition for the year-long course.
Lafourche’s first woman parish president and the first one to be re-elected closed by saying she could write a book about her experience in office, although she joked she would have to move if she did. Randolph urged those in attendance to continue to support the parish she led for 12 years.
“Please continue to support Lafourche. Please continue to support Leadership Lafourche. Please continue to support Windell [Curole] for all the good he’s done for this parish, and so many of you,” Randolph said. m
Charlotte Randolph addresses the crowd at the Leadership Lafourche dinner honoring her 12 years as Lafourche Parish President. The organization has created a scholarship for its one-year program in Randolph’s name.
