RICHARD PLATER, JR. Obituary: Terrebonne Parish, La. Submitted by: Louis Lavedan Source: Houma Courier, Houma, Terrebonne Parish, La. 4 Jan 2005 ================================================== ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** ================================================== NOTES: 1. The date preceding the obituary is the date of posting on the WWW, not the date of death. ============================= January 02. 2005 12:20AM Richard Plater Jr. [Photo] Richard Cheatham Plater Jr., 96, a native of Nashville, Tenn., and resident of Thibodaux, died Dec. 25, 2004. A memorial service will be held at 10:30 a.m. Jan. 8 at St. John's Episcopal Church in Thibodaux. Burial will be at Old Chapel Cemetery in Clarke County, Va., at a later date. He is survived by two sons, Ormonde Plater of New Orleans and David D. Plater of Thibodaux; six grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his parents, Richard C. Sr. and Anna Gay Butler Plater; his first wife, Eleanore Leake Plater of Williamstown, Mass., and his second wife, Pamela Robinson Plater of New Orleans. He graduated from Williams College, Mass., and worked in the banking field, as a movie director, a claims adjuster for an insurance company, a psychotherapist in Boston and for the National Labor Relations Board as a labor dispute settler in Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama before moving to Thibodaux to manage the family sugar-cane plantation in 1940. He was parish director of the American Red Cross in Lafourche Parish during World War II. He served as an area council member for the Boy Scouts of America, receiving the Silver Beaver award in 1960. He was Lafourche Parish Director of Civil Defense for many years. He was a member of the Thibodaux Regional Planning Commission and was a charter founder of Public Affairs Council and of the Council for a Better Louisiana. In addition to being a longtime member of the Boston Club of New Orleans, he formerly belonged to one of the oldest Carnival organizations in that city. He was a member of the Lafourche Heritage Society and of Louisiana Landmarks. During the 1960s and 1970s, he led restoration work of a historic water-operated grain mill built by Gen. Daniel Morgan just after the American Revolution. He received much recognition for his efforts in local history in the Shenandoah Valley locale of Clarke County, Va., where he kept a summer home until recently. He also was a member of the Piedmont Council and benefactor of Shenandoah University in Winchester, Va., of Williams College, Massachusetts and of the Van Lennup Foundation of Clarke County. He was a former member of the Board of the Kenmore Association of Fredericksburg, Va., the site of an ancestral Kenmore home built by Fielding Lewis and Betty Washington Lewis. He also made significant contributions of family documents to the Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans, and to the Hill Memorial Special Collections at LSU. Donations in memory of Richard C. Plater Jr. may be made to the St. John's Episcopal Church and Cemetery Endowment Fund, 718 Jackson St., Thibodaux, LA 70301; the Historic New Orleans Collection, 533 Royal St., New Orleans, LA 70116; or the LSU Foundation for the Hill Memorial Library Special Collections Division, Baton Rouge, LA 70803.