Resident Uncovers More Parish Memories
Times Picayune 02-1-1996

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At 82, Joy Levet Lodrigues' memories cover many events in St. John the Baptist
Parish's history. She has been the source of my past two columns.

Here are more recollections that didn't quite fit into the previous columns,
but offer interesting glimpses into a time many of us are too young to
remember.

When electricity came to LaPlace, A.D. Jacob and Daniel Madere worked for
Armond Montz in his ice factory where the electricity was generated. They also
strung all the wire necessary to bring it to local homes and businesses. Jacob
was a pioneer with Louisiana Power & Light, and Madere started the Reserve
Telephone Company.

"There is too little said about them and their importance to the parish,"
Lodrigues said.

She met her husband, Winnie Lodrigues, when she was 16 while both were
visiting mutual friends in New Orleans. He was the center on Tulane's football
team when they played the 1931 Rose Bowl.

"I had the thrill of having a boyfriend and wearing his sweater," she
recalled.

They married seven years later.

Her brother Claude, who majored in French at Loyola University, became a
lawyer about the time of the Louisiana oil boom. Legal records back then were
in French, so he and Melvin Barre translated them all into English for the oil
companies between 1932-1942 and did the same for Plaquemines Parish.

In 1942 Claude received his commission as an ensign in the U.S. Navy and was
French interpreter to an admiral.

Their father died, and Claude was allowed to resign his commission to come
home and run the San Francisco Planting and Manufacturing Co.

Lodrigues remembers LaPlace when it was a front road and everything else was
cane fields.

Back then you had to go through Baton Rouge or New Orleans to get to
Ponchatoula, she said.

No women in the parish worked when she was growing up, "even if you were a
college graduate, because women just didn't do it," she said. "Most teachers
in St. John Parish were brought in after graduating from LSU or Southwestern.
They used to ride the train home on weekends."

She said a lot of them married local boys.

Lodrigues' aunt, Ida Ory, was an independent person. She became a bookkeeper
for the Lighthouse for the Blind in New Orleans.

When Ory moved back to the country, she was a school teacher for many years.

"She had to work because she was a single woman," Lodrigues said. "You know
the women's movement? She was the beginning."

Later she became the bookkeeper for San Francisco Plantation.

Ida claimed 54 first cousins.

"Funerals to her were wonderful because she met everybody she knew," Lodrigues
said.

Judy Creekmore, a LaPlace resident, writes about memorable moments in the
lives of River Parishes residents. If you have any interesting memory to share
call her at 652-1398.