Principal’s prophecy

The assembly hall was a sea of red. Red jumpsuits, worn by men who didn’t pick them off a rack, but who were assigned to them. This is because the three dozen or so who were there last week have, for various lengths of time, been required by law to spend time as guests of Terrebonne Parish, in a jail.

The ones at Sheriff Jerry Larpenter’s rifle range and training center were not of the type who do crimes of violence. They did commit crimes against property.

As such they were permitted to be part of Larpenter’s much-publicized inmate work program, which has seen them performing tasks ranging recently cleaning up a neglected cemetery to clean-up of high schools and athletic fields.

It is due to the latter that they were gathered at the rifle range, in a curious twist of the roles between captor and captive, keeper and kept.

“I am serving lunch for inmates,” Larpenter said, when he invited me to attend the luncheon.

For weeks the inmates, under the supervision of Col. Tommy Odom, had pressure-washed Terrebonne High School, cleaned and sprayed its football field, and performed other tasks that made a huge difference in appearance.

Larpenter addressed the inmates first, taking a didactic approach, in his own way trying to make it all part of a teaching moment.

The sheriff himself didn’t do the actual doling out of catfish and white beans, as well as bread pudding, it was actually staff who did that. But it was Larpenter who noted, several times, that the inmates would be first in the line, once the speeches were over and the grub portioned out.

At one of the tables, where I sat, was 20-year-old Mykel John Gilbert. The records show him convicted for the simple burglary of a home. Mykel looks more like a refugee from a boy band than a thief, as if anyone knows what a thief should or does look like. I have known thieves who have gone to jail and wear the uniform of the street, but also others with clean records and well-tailored business suits.

So, go figure.

Mykel paid close attention as Larpenter spoke, and as District Attorney Joe Waitz Jr. added a few words of his own. He didn’t smirk, he didn’t pout. A few other people spoke at the luncheon, among them Superintendent of Schools Philip Martin.

“From misfortune good can come,” Martin said. “You have been part of something that is extremely good.”

On the table at which Mykel and other inmates sat was a place card. On there was a color photo of the teachers and the staff in front of Terrebonne High, with smiles on their faces, and a big sign reading “Thank you Sheriff Larpenter and crew.”

From the look on Mykel’s face and the looks on faces of other inmates, Martin was hitting a nerve, in a good way, and it was bolstered by the place card. The thanks, the faces said, were being received as sincere.

Julio Contreras was the next speaker, the principal of Terrebonne High.

When the students returned to school, Contreras said, they would be more motivated, they would be proud of their school.

The new school year, he noted, is a time of renewal.

“Each year we treat them like brand new students, a brand new start, a new beginning, and that, gentlemen, is what I hope for you.”

And then Contreras said something else, something that reverberated in its simplicity through the room.

“Some of you came to Terrebonne,” Contreras said. “I would like to think we did the very best to help you. If we didn’t, we apologize.”

The speeches ended. Mykel, who had attended Houma Junior High, got up to retrieve a lunch plate.

“What Mr. Contreras said, about when we get out, getting a new start, and how every day is a new day,” Mykel said, was the message that meant the most to him. “What he said about how we can’t dwell in the past.”

He got in line with the others picking up lunch, on that day some kind of hero instead of what the red jumpsuit tells people. There was a spring in his step, which may or may not have been there before. I hoped that the words of Contreras, for Mykel and every other red-suit there, would prove not just to be hope, but a prophecy. After the inmates were served I got in line, and picked up a Styrofoam plate. The food tasted good.

Principal’s prophecy

Terrebonne High Principal Julio Contreras addresses Terrebonne Parish inmates who renovated the grounds of his school last month.

JOHN DESANTIS | THE TIMES