Elizabeth Lirette
September 7, 2017
Home and Garden!
September 7, 2017
Throughout my life, my elementary school years have rested gentle on my mind.
I fondly remember my dedicated teachers, Miss Nettles, Miss Bourgeois, Mrs. Luke Cheramie, Miss Bolden, Miss Costanza, Miss Waguespack and especially Miss Weldon, my third grade teacher.
I have always been grateful for whatever fate assigned me to sit in their classes.
They were great teachers but were scrutinized and held to higher and more stringent personal standards.
Most of them lived in Mrs. Inez Rizan’s boarding house, next door to the school. The Rizans also operated a grocery store and lunch counter on the batture near the school. Having no school cafeteria, we often ate there.
Left a widow early in life, she later became Mrs. Inez Sako, wife of a well-known physician.
Now, back a few years to my first day in third grade. I was dazzled by it all because I had not yet mastered the English language. (My readers can tell that I still haven’t). The door opened and in walked a beautiful young lady who wrote on the blackboard, “My name is Marion Weldon.”
She then told us, “You may call me Miss Weldon.”
The jaw of every male 9-year old third grader hit the floor.
They were smitten, and so was I. Of course, I shrugged it off. After all, there was the language barrier and she was pretty old … at least 19, I guessed.
She told us, “I’ll try to teach you English and you can teach me French.”
Well, she taught us English but I don’t know if she ever learned French.
She was reading a book one day and called my attention to it.
“In a few years, when you have learned the language, read this book,” she said.
About three years later, I did. It was about the French Revolution and contained the greatest opening and closing lines in literary fiction history … “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”, and, “It’s a far far better thing I do than I have ever done, it is a far better place I go to that I have ever known.”
Mostly because of this book, I became and am still today, a voracious reader.
It was ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ by Charles Dickens.
I didn’t give up my comic books cold turkey, but my reading tastes improved as I got older.
I found out that Miss Weldon was from a prominent Thibodaux family, but she soon grew to love Golden Meadow, was wooed and won by young Jack Egle, the town’s most eligible bachelor who later became the Mayor of Golden Meadow. Their son, Dick Egle, became the first elected President of Lafourche Parish when the form of government was changed from Police Jury to President/Council. Miss Weldon must have been proud.
I didn’t see her much for the rest of her life, she was busy teaching, raising a family and becoming the first lady of Golden Meadow. Her son, Dick and his sisters entrusted me with her wedding day picture and told me, “she was a warm and caring person.”
Many years later, I visited my mother at the Cut Off nursing home. It was her 89th birthday and I had written and recorded a song for her called “Helen,” which I sang as a nurse wheeled her around. It was, so far, a joyful day.
Then, I noticed a lady sitting in a wheel chair, not moving and staring straight ahead.
“Who is that?” I asked a nurse.
“That’s Mrs. Jack Egle,” she answered.
It was my favorite teacher!
I later learned that she had Alzheimer’s, and her son, Dick told me that, “It had turned her personality around 180 degrees.”
I watched her awhile, and as I was leaving, my eyes were moist, and a tear flowed down.
No, not for my mother … Mom and I had a nice afternoon, she laughed, enjoyed my singing, (well … my mother, you know), and was in great spirits, but the tear was for my beautiful third grade teacher and through my eyes, that day, she still looked the same as when she walked into my classroom, many, many years ago. Bye now.
In this week’s column, Historical Columnist Leroy Martin tells us about school life and his favorite teacher, whom he met in the third grade. As life would have it, Leroy later met the woman again later in life, sharing a beautiful, heart-warming story about when he saw his favorite teacher again after many, many years away.
