Maxine Ann Scharff Dammon

                                                             My Memories

I don’t know exactly why I decided to start this journal.  Perhaps I was prompted by a novel that I read called “Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood”.  Parts of it are set in the 1940’s and it started a flood of memories and that is what this will be.  I am starting this in the year 2008 . Not a diary, just memories as they come to me, sometimes completely unbidden.  Maybe someday my son Tim or maybe my stepchildren and grand children might be interested in reading it.  Regardless, I feel the need to write it.  There won’t be any chronological order.  I’ll write them down as they come to me.

I should begin with some geneology:  I was born Maxine Ann Scharff on November 13, 1930 at twenty minutes after midnight in Dauterive Hospital.  My Mother was Sylvia Ann Broussard (she died on January 13, 2001 at the age of 106) and my Father was Julius Scharff (he died July 26, 1946 when I was 15 years old, 2 months after I graduated from High School).  We lived in the town of New Iberia, Louisiana and I remained there until I was 18 years of age.  It was a good place to live, a small, pretty town where people knew each other.

My parents were not young when I was born.  My Mother was 36 and my Father was 55.  They were married on March 13, 1929 in Alexandria, Louisiana.  At that time my Dad owned the Elks Theatre located on Main Street in New Iberia.  It had started out years before as a vaudeville theatre and stage shows then evolved into a movie theatre.  My Mother worked as a cashier at the theatre and after a 12 year courtship they married.  I have been told that my Dad was quite the “man about town” in his young days and a very popular bachelor in New Iberia society.  He still owned the Elks Theatre when I was born and I do have a vague memory of it.  Especially his office.  It was on the 2nd floor and had a big conference table with brown leather chairs.  The Elks was closed during the depression and never opened again as a movie theatre, but my Father let the schools use it for plays, amateur hours, band concerts, etc.(Free of charge, of course)  He then opened the Palace Theatre which was also on Main Street 3 blocks down from the old Elks.  In 1936 he built and opened the Essanee Theatre.  Essanee stood for the initials S & E, Scharff and Elias.  (Mr. Elias Elias was my Dad’s partner).  The opening was a big deal in the small town of New Iberia.  The theatre was very avant garde in its day.  It was AIR CONDITIONED!!!!  Movies were very popular in those days and the playbill changed 3 times a week.  One movie played Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, another Wednesday and Thursday and another on Friday and Saturday.  The Essanee was beautifully designed and decorated.  The main lobby had a tile floor with the letters S&E in the center.  The foyer was done in shades of blue, from light to dark and the sofas and chairs were all in white leather.  The carpet was custom made .  It was dark blue with the letters S&E , in gold, intertwined here and there.  Very Art Deco, which was all the rage in the thirties.  That theatre was my Father’s pride and joy and he ran it until the day he died.

After they married my Mom did not work anymore.  Very, very few women worked after they married in those days.  They stayed home and took care of their homes and raised their children and their husbands took care of them all.  

Both of my parents came from large families.  My Mother’s parents were William Broussard and Annie Haynes.  Both of my Grandparents were of French heritage but were born in the U.S.  My Mother came from a family of 8 children. Named in order of age they were Foligny, Slavin, Lilia, Sylvia (my Mother), Rita, Raymond, Harold and Knox.  They all lived nearby so I was very close to all of my aunts and uncles.  Aunt Lil was my Godmother and I loved her to pieces.  She never married and dearly loved all of her nieces and nephews but everyone accepted the fact that Bobbie and I were her favorites.  Everyone in that family were Catholics.

My Father came from a family of 7 children.  My Father’s parents were Joseph Scharff and Babett Dahlman . They were German and immigrated to the U.S. in 1861.  Their 2 oldest children were born in Germany.  The others including my Dad were born in the U.S.  His family was of the Jewish faith.  Named in order of age his siblings were Louis, Morris, Leonora, Henry , Julius, (my Dad),  Max (the uncle that I’m named after) and Beulah.  I never knew Louis, Morris or Henry because they died before I was born.  My Aunts Nora and Beulah and Uncle Max were all raised in New Iberia but by the time I was born all 3 had moved to Texas.  But they would visit often so I knew then well also. When I was little I looked forward to their visits because they always brought me really nice presents.  My Dad’s Mother, Babett, died when he was only four years old.  So he was really raised by his Father’s second wife, Henrietta Mayer.  (Max and Beulah were her children by my grandfather).  I am told that she was a wonderful woman raising all those stepchildren and my Dad was completely devoted to her.

Before I go any further I want to say that I was very lucky.  I had a great childhood and teenage years.  I had and still have friends that I have known since childhood, not one or two but a bunch.  Not many people can say that.  

Mary Daigre’s House  (1931-1935)

When I was about 6 months old we moved to a house on Charles Street in New Iberia.  This house was demolished a few years ago.  We lived there until I was about 4 years old.  It was a white, 2-story house that was owned by a childless couple named Homer and Mary Daigre.  We occupied the downstairs and the Daigres lived upstairs.  For some reason we always referred to this place as “Mary Daigre’s  house”.  I remember them well, particularly Mary.  They were sort of a “Maggie & Jiggs” couple.  (For those of you too young to remember Maggie & Jiggs was a comic strip about a couple where the woman was tall and the man was short and she was always very much in charge.)  Mary was an ample woman with very dark hair worn in a very short, close to the head shingle cut with a flat, spit curl on each cheek.  She had a broad face and smiled often and seemed kind.  I always think of her as dressed in navy blue.  Her husband Homer (pronounce “Omair” in the French way) was a quiet nondescript little man in a brown suit and bowler hat.  I don’t recall ever hearing him speak.  This is the first house that I remember living in.  I was told that for the first six months of my life we lived in the upstairs of a house on St. Peter Street.  That house is still there and the lady who owned the house was a friend of my parents.  Her name was Lila Wolfe and she was always sort of an aunt to me.  She died many years ago and so did the Daigres.

Some of my earliest memories are in this house.  I remember being fascinated by a brass plate on the wall in the living room.  It was the size of a light switch plate and had a keyhole shaped opening covered by a little brass door that if you pushed on the top of the opening it would swing ipen to reveal an outlet to screw in a light bulb. I think I was about 3 years old at this time. I had to climb up on a chair to reach it and I opened the little door and stuck my finger into it.  Do I need to tell what happened next?  I can still feel the buzzy, tingling, hurting sensation of that electrical shock.  I was thrown off the chair and onto the floor screaming my head off.  The first person to reach me was my cousin (much older than me, probably 25 years)  Janice Scharff.  The memory ends abruptly there, with Janice bending over me.  I guess my Mother was in the other room wringing her hands or something equally useless.  She was never very good in situations like this.  I had asthma as a child and when I was having an attack I always tried not to get near my Mother so she wouldn't hear me wheezing because when she did she would start to cry and carry on so that I thought I was dieing and naturally that made the asthma worse.

While we lived on Charles Street a black girl came to live with us to be my Nanny.  I was about 6 months old when she was hired.  Her name was Esther Placide.  We also at that time had a white cook named Elsie.  Esther was to become a permanent fixture with us as she stayed with us until I was in High School then (since I didn’t need a Nanny anymore) she joined the WACS (Womens Army Corps) and we didn’t see much of her after that except some visits when she came home on leave.

Esther’s sister Harriet was Nanny to the 3 Aubrey girls, Joellen, Renee and Babette.  Babette, the youngest and I are the same age and they lived just a few blocks from us.  Harriet used to put the 3 little girls (they are all very close in age) in a red wagon and bring them to play with me.  Babette and I were about 3 years old and she was riding my tricycle (inside the house).  I remember this vividly, I decided that I wanted to ride the bike and I stood in front so she couldn’t move it, but she wouldn’t get off and let me have it.  I can still see her fat little hands on the handlebars.  I leaned over and sunk my teeth into them and Babette howled for all she was worth !  My Mother grabbed me and locked me in the bathroom to punish me.  I deserved it, but I couldn’t believe this was happening.  I had never been punished in this manner before.  I remember beating on the door and screaming to be let out.  I have no idea how long I was in there but I certainly remember.  It had never happened before and I don’t think it ever happened again.  Babette and I have remained friends for all these years, and 70 years later we laugh about it.

We Leave “Mary Daigre’s  House”

We lived in Mary Daigre’s house until I was 4 years old then we moved to 124 Jefferson Street and stayed there for only a couple of years.  We eventually moved back to that house and that is where I spent my teen-age, high school ,dating years.  More about that later.

New Iberia is bisected by Bayou Teche.  So, just as New Orleanians refer to the Northshore as “across the lake”, New Iberians refer to any location on the opposite side of the bayou from Main Street as “across the bayou”.  When I was about 6 we moved to a house “across the bayou”.  It was 2 blocks from the City Park where we played, had picnics, rode our bikes, etc.  The first Christmas we lived in that house it snowed.  This was a new experience for me for I had never seen snow before.  When we put up our Christmas tree Uncle Harold (my Mother’s second to youngest brother) and Aunt Esther (his wife) came over and decorated it and they hung red wreaths with orange bulbs that looked like candles in all of the windows in the front of the house.  I remember looking through those lighted wreaths into the darkness to watch the snow coming down.  The snow was still on the ground the next day and we got to play in it.  “We” meaning my cousin Bobbie (Harvey Broussard).  He is the son of Uncle Harold and Aunt Esther.  We are first cousins, but he has always been like a brother to me.  He is 3 years older than I and my parents had taken him under their wings before I was born and that did not change after I came along.  Bobbie was always with us and I loved him and loved having him there.  We had many adventures together over the years and lots of fun.

I had other cousins who were important in my life.  My cousin P.L. Renoudet  (Pete) has always been special to me.  He is the son of my Mother’s sister Rita.  Pete is four and a half years younger than me.  He is a very talented person, singer and actor.  We used to play together when we were kids and are very close.  He has lived in California for many years now but comes home to visit once a year.  I miss him being so far away but we keep in close touch.  Another cousin who was important when I was a kid was my cousin Eulalie Mouret (her nickname is Ta, I don’t have a clue why).  Eulalie was raised by her Grandmother because her mother died in childbirth.  Her Grandmother, Tante Doodoose, was my Grandmother’s sister and the two sisters lived together so my Grandmother had a hand in raising Ta.  I used to spend the day with my Grandmother often and so Ta and I were playmates.  There were oodles of other cousins on the Broussard side of the family some older than me and some younger and I was pretty close to all of them because they all lived nearby.

There were Scharff cousins also, but with the exception of Janice Scharff they did not live in New Iberia.  My first cousins on the Scharff side like Janice were all much older than I because my Father married so late in life, so it was their children (my second cousins) who were my age.  There was Janet Scharff who was raised in Kansas City, Missouri and Morris Scharff who was raised in Shreveport, Louisiana.  I knew them well because they would come to visit often.  I became friends again with my cousin Morris when I was at Dominican and he was at Tulane.  His frat house was on Broadway a few blocks from my dorm so I met a lot of his frat brothers and went to some dances and parties with them.  A bunch of really handsome guys those ZBT (Zeta Beta Tau) boys with the exception of  my cousin Morris who was homely as he could be.  So, naturally he was brilliant.  He earned a Doctorate in Mathematics and became one of the head scientists at the Mount Palomar Observatory.  I have not heard from him in years.

My Grandmother

I only had one Grandmother that I knew and she was my maternal Grandmother.  Her name was Ainee (Annie) Hanes Broussard.  She was born on October 28, 1869.  She came from a family of six sisters:  Antonia, Eulalie, Noemie, Ainee, Emelie and Dehlia.  My grandfather had left her when her children were young and so I always think of her as being single.  When I picture Momom (that’s what we all called her)  I think of her wearing an apron over her dress.  That was her morning attire and she kept it on until after the main meal, which was always at midday, was over and cleaned up.  Then she would sit in her rocking chair and say her rosary before she could putter around in her little garden if the weather was nice.  Her English was limited so when she spoke to us it was always part English and part French.  She was a little person and she wore her gray hair in a bun in the nape of her neck.  She never that I can recall wore any colors other than black and white.  She was always in mourning (solid black) or half mourning (black and white) for someone who had died.  She could not read or write English and she said all of her prayers in French.  When I look at pictures of her when I was small she looks like an old woman and I realize now that when I was little she was only in her sixties, but she had a hard life raising all those kids without an education or a husband.  She was kind and gentle and I remember that her fragile hands were always cool to the touch.  She was only seven years older than my Dad , but she always called him Mr. Scharff and he always called her Madame Broussard and she always referred to her prodigal husband as Monseiur Broussard (when she spoke of him at all which wasn’t often).  I will say more about him later.

Momom was a WONDERFUL cook.  Most of her time was spent in the kitchen fixing meals for the people who lived in the house on Vine Street in New Iberia.  There was Momom, her sister Tante Doodoose, my cousin Eulalie, my Aunt Lil , my Uncle Knox and his wife Lenora.  The latter three were the bread winners in that house.  I used to love to eat with them.  The Sunday dinner was my favorite, Chicken Stew in a dark brown gravy with rice (we had rice at just about every meal), macaroni and cheese, a vegetable or two and potato salad.  Yum, yum !  She made biscuits or cornbread every morning and the left over cornbread would sit on the stove the rest of the day and you could break off a piece whenever you wanted to for a snack.  If the biscuits or cornbread were left at the end of the day they were eaten with syrup or coffee-milk for supper.  Plain food and good eating.

 
Summers

Summers were fun when we lived in that house on Marie Street (across the bayou).  There were kids all around to play with.  My cousin Bobbie lived 2 blocks away, the Sealys (Mr. Sealy was an old friend of my Dad’s) lived next door and their grandchildren came to spend the summer every year.  They were Billy and James Hix and H.S. Sealy, III.  Pat Neff lived on the other side of the Sealys and across the street from the Neffs was Buddy Rose.  Three houses down from Bobbie were the Breaux sisters:  Phyllis, Evelyn and Barbara (Bobby).  We were lifetime friends.

One summer we had a lemonade stand that we set up in my front yard.  My Mother would make pitchers of real lemonade and we sold them for five cents a glass.  A few people actually stopped and bought some, but I think we drank most of it ourselves.

The summer of 1938 I learned to ride a bicycle.  Bobbie and I had received bikes for Christmas and being a boy and 12 years old, he already knew how to ride but no one had taught me.  One day I walked my bike along with the Breaux girls to the old, dirt tennis courts in the park.  Phyllis, who was the oldest (about 5 years older than me) in this bunch decided she was tired of seeing me walk my bike so she took me in hand and taught me to ride that very day.

The boys were delighted that we (the girls) were all riding bikes now because they could  lie in wait for us in the park and ambush us with their “rubber guns”.  I can still feel the sting of those strips of automobile inner-tubes on my bare legs.  And, if the stings caused one of us to fall off our bikes, then the boys were absolutely gleeful.  We thought we hated those stinkin’ boys.

I wasn’t allowed to get dirty.  My Mother wanted me to always be perfect (what a dreamer she was!).  I remember one summer day some of the girls and I were in the park near the bayou edge watching some boys who were swimming.  They were Buddy Rose, Pat Neff, Rene Patout and I think my cousin Bobbie was there too.  I was about 11 then and the boys were 13 and 14.  They were playfully trying to splash us and we were giggling and ducking the water when suddenly Buddy Rose reached down in the water, got a handful of black mud and threw it.  Bullseye! On my sparkling white, sharkskin shorts.  The boys thought this was hilarious!!  They were laughing and throwing themselves on the water.  I dreaded going home cause I knew my Mother would have a fit.  At that moment I HATED Buddy Rose with all of my 11 year old hatred.  Not too many years later my feelings about this boy would change.  More about that later.

We went to Galveston every summer and stayed for 2 weeks.  We being my parents, my cousin Bobbie and me.  My Dad’s brother Max and his wife Ellis, his 2 sisters Nora and Bea would meet us there (It seems that Aunt Nora and Aunt Bea were always widows).  All three of them had migrated to Texas many years before.  Uncle Max lived in Groesbeck, Aunt Nora lived in Mexia and Aunt Bea in Waco. We always stayed at the Buccaneer Hotel which faced the beach and the Murdock Pier.  The pier had a souvenir store and a restaurant and Bobbie and I would love to look at all the swim stuff and toys in the store.  My Mother liked to set up on the beach under the pier because it was shady there. We loved it there.  Every night after dinner my folks would take us to the boardwalk which was heaven for kids.  There was a Carousel with horses that looked like race horses and they didn’t just go up and down they moved forward and back and if your horse was ahead of the others in your row when the ride ended you won a free ride.  My Uncle Max didn’t call them Flying Horses like we did, he called them the Flying Jinnys(I guess that was a Texas thing)..   There was a Ferris Wheel , a huge Roller Coaster, a Hall of Mirrors and all sort of other rides.There were booths where you could play games and win prizes.  It was a wonderful place for kids.  A 1930’s Disneyland.

One night on the boardwalk Bobbie and I each got a pair of Huraches.  These are sandals made from strips of raw leather woven together.  I remember they squeaked when you walked.  That night after we went to bed those raw leather shoes smelled so bad that my Mother got up and put both pairs out in the hallway . 

School Days

I was 4 years old when I started Kindergarten.  The only thing I really remember about it is the nutty old lady who was the teacher.  Her name was Mrs. Hale and she had this Kindergarten in her home for many years.  It seemed to me that she was old and she was very plump and always wore a pink dress with a pinafore over it.  She would sing and dance for us and play games and I thought her very strange.

I was still 4 years old in September of 1935 when my parents put me in Kindergarten at Mount Carmel Academy.  This was a Catholic school run by the Sisters of Mount Carmel.  They wore black habits with a brown scapular and black veils with a white wimple.  I only stayed in Kindergarten a few days because when the nuns found out that I could already read (my Dad had taught me) they put me in the first grade.  My first grade teacher was Sister Veronica.  She was young and pretty and I loved her immediately.  My first day at school I recall vividly.  When I figured it was getting to be time to go home I began to cry and when Sister asked my why I told her that I was afraid that my Mother wouldn’t know when to come and get me.  Sister smiled and took me by the hand and led me to the window and told me to look outside.  There was my Mother sitting in the car waiting for me.  What Sister Veronica knew and I didn’t know was that my Mother had never left.  She had been sitting out there ALL DAY. 

I want to mention at this point that some of my life-long friends started 1st grade with me.  There was Evelyn Breaux (the middle of the Breaux girls), Joan Ann Minvielle, Margarite Elias (her Dad was my Father’s partner in the theatre business) and Julia Doumit.  Evelyn and Joan Ann and I were to go through all our school days together, grades 1 through 11 and Evelyn, Margarite and Julia and I even went to college together. 

I attended Mount Carmel Academy 1st through 7th grades.  I have no memory of my 2nd or 3rd grade teachers.  My 4th grade teacher was Sister Gertrude and all I remember of her is that she was small, thin and not young, but she was kind and gentle.  There was one nun that I was really afraid of.  She was never one of my regular teachers, but she did teach me Catechism when I was in 2nd grade.  It seemed that she was always angry at me about something.  I was never sure what she was angry about but I knew that she didn’t like me.  Even at that young age (I was 5 and 6 during that semester) one recognizes when one is not liked.  Looking back as an adult I remember that she was young and pretty and very athletic.  She only looked happy when she was coaching the Senior girls basketball team.  Maybe she just didn’t like being a nun.  My 5th, 6th and 7th grade teacher is indelible in my mind because she taught me all three years.  Her name was Sister Mary Francis.  She was small and fragile looking and had a little, pointy nose and very dark, brown eyes.  I loved her.  I think that her love of books has been very influential in my love for books.  She would read to us every day for the last half hour of the school day and also at recess on rainy days when we could not go out to play.  She introduced us to books like “The Secret Garden”,  “Enchantment Tales for Children” (which was my introduction to mythology) and “A Childs Garden of Verses” (poems by Robert Louis Stevenson).  We loved this time in class.  It signaled the end of the school day, it was a quiet time and nothing was expected of us but to relax and listen (and learn even though we didn’t realize that’s what we were doing).  When I became a teacher I read to my students as she did and the kids always enjoyed what we dubbed our “reading-listening” time.

In elementary school at Mt. Carmel every year they held an Elocution Contest.  There was a competition in every class, starting with 1st grade,  each girl learned a poem or recitation and presented it to the class.  Then three girls from each class were chosen for the finals which were held in the auditorium at night with an audience and a winner was chosen from each group of three and awarded a gold pin. I still remember the first few lines of the poem I recited in 1st grade.  It was “Hiding” by Robert Louis Stevenson and it started like this:  “I’m hiding, I’m hiding and no one knows where.  Cause all they can see are my toes and my hair.”   Amazing what kind of trivia can stay in ones head.  I recited that poem seventy-three years ago.  Modesty forbids my saying  that I was good at this, but I was.  I won every year that I was in it, which was up to the 7th grade, except in the 3rd grade when the group was Joan Ann, Julia and me.  The night of the contest Joan Ann and I were both home in bed with the measles so guess who won?  Right! Julia.

A note about Julia.  Every year for the Christmas Pageant Julia and I were the angels that stood over the manger.  Julia had very dark, black hair and I was very blonde and the nuns liked the contrast .  Julia wore her hair in braids and mine was always in curls so we would compete to see who’s hair was the longest when we were allowed to brush it out and just let it hang loose like we thought angels hair should look.  Our hair was down to our waists but Julia’s always looked longer because it fell straight and mine was wavy.  I guess that’s when I learned that you can’t win ‘em all.  A valuable lesson at any age.

During my grammar school years I took piano lessons.  I started when I was five, I couldn’t even reach an octave.  My first teacher was a mean, sour faced old maid named Miss Claire DeGravelles.  I hated her!  She was impatient and I think, didn’t like kids very much.  I dreaded going to those lessons and especially dreaded Saturday morning classes in Theory.  BOOOORING!!!!!  My parents finally caught on so my next teacher came to our house for my lessons.  Her name was Mrs Madry and she was very nice and I did learn to read music and play.  There was just one fly-in-the-ointment,  I was allergic to the poor lady.  I don’t know if it was her powder or her perfume but I sneezed the whole time she was giving me a lesson.  But we managed.  I don’t remember how old I was when I stopped taking piano lessons.  Probably around the 7th grade.

I also took dance lessons.  The teachers name was Miss Sue Farrior.  I took tap dancing and ballet.  I thought it was great fun and especially liked ballet.  We had “dance reviews” once a year and got to do routines and wear beautiful costumes.  At least I thought they were at the time.  My cousin Bobbie and Gene Dauterive took dance lessons too and one time in the review we did a number together, it was the “Dance of the Wooden Soldiers”.  Gene, Bobbie and I still laugh about those times.  I took dance for 10 years.  Can you believe it?

When I was 11 we moved back to the house at 124 Jefferson Street and it was there that I would live until the day I married and moved away.

My High School Years (1942-1946) – The War Years, World War II (1941-1945)
World War II began on December 7, 1941.  It was about one o’clock on a Sunday afternoon and we were at the Palace Theatre (which my Dad owned) waiting for the movie to start when Larry Dietlein, a boy I had known all of my life, came in and said that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.  My Mother was sitting in the back row, where she always sat and I went to her and asked her where was Pearl Harbor and she told me to go and ask my Dad.  I guess she didn’t know where it was either.  I had just had my 11th birthday and was in the 7th grade at Mount Carmel at this time.  I could tell from the way the adults were taking this news that this was a very serious event, but Hawaii seemed very far away indeed.
I entered New Iberia High School in September 1942 in grade 8.  At that time high school was grades 8 through 11.  I was 2 months away from my 12th birthday.  I was a year or two younger than most of my classmates, but I don’t recall that it ever made a difference.  My closest friends from grammar school Evelyn Breaux and Joan Ann Minvielle made the change from private school to public school with me.  Our main reasons for making the change, which seemed valid to us, were :  1. Once you reached 8th grade at Mt. Carmel you had to wear uniforms.  Brown pleated skirts and white blouses Ugh!.  2.  Public school was co-ed.  There were BOYS THERE!!!!  That , of course, was the clincher.  Our parents were not that thrilled with the change but after some begging they gave in.

We settled into a routine.  Sometimes my Mother drove me to school in the morning and some days I walked with other girls. Sis Lamperez  (we are still friends to this day) and Annette Warren had to pass my house and they would stop for me and we would walk together. Often in the morning when we got to the railroad crossing at Center Street there would be a Troop train passing, loaded down with young soldiers and sailors.  They would be hanging out the windows, doors, everywhere, waving and hollering at the girls.  We loved this and would wave and smile and flirt and then they would be out of sight, off to who knows where and to what fate.  We looked forward to this every morning and were seldom disappointed. 

I went home for lunch every day.  We had our main meal of the day at noon.  My Mother came for me, Bobbie and my cousin Janice Scharff who ate with us.  Janice was a teacher at NIHS for her entire career, which was many years, and taught senior English and Literature.  Like a lot of teachers in those days she never married.  Then we would pick up my Dad at the theatre.  We would all have a meal together and then back in the car for Mother to bring us all back for one o’clock.  School let out at 4:00 PM and she was almost always there to pick me up.  If she wasn’t I would walk to the Essanee and have a visit with my Dad and bum some money from him to buy something at Morgan and Lindsay, the Five & Dime store or we would go to the drugstore (Kahns Pharmacy or Estorges) for a soda.  Lest you think that my Mother was overworked making meals for all these people everyday, rest assured that was not the case.  We had hot and cold running servants, including a full time cook who lived in the servants quarters in the back of our house.  My Mom was very well taken care of.

Thinking of the people who did things for us I remember the elderly, black lady who was our laundress, her name was Alice.  Thinking back on it how hard she must have worked.  Every Monday morning my Mother would gather up the laundry .  She would lay a sheet on the floor and all of the dirty linens would be put on the sheet.  I remember when I was small that I loved to run and jump on this pile on the floor.  Of course this sent things helter-skelter and this did not please my Mom at all.  The corners of the bottom sheet were then brought up and tied into a bundle.  The bundle was then placed into a laundry basket to be brought to Alice’s house.  Alice lived in a small, shotgun style house.  She did not have a washing machine or dryer, she did all of the wash by hand in a tub and washboard.  On Wednesday we would return to pick up the laundry.  My Dad’s shirts were on hangers the rest  was all folded neatly and placed in the basket.  I remember the good smell of that pile of clean linens.  Everything had been ironed, sheets, pillow cases, everything.  It smelled of sunshine and fresh air and no laundry done in machines, no matter how clean, will ever smell that good.  

The war seemed very distant to us small town kids in those days.  We were very aware of it, there were newsreels and rationing, books of coupons for gas, sugar, meat and shoes, but we always seemed to have plenty of everything.  There were patriotic drives for the war effort at school.  We would save toothpaste tubes and make huge balls of tin foil mostly from gum wrappers that we peeled the back off of.  We bought Savings Stamps, 25 cents each, and saved them in books and when it was full we would get an $18.75 War Bond (which matured in 20 years at a value of $25.00) a really good investment we were told.  Later in the war when I belonged to the Girl Scouts we would meet on Saturdays and the ladies taught us to roll bandages and we took Home Nursing courses.  Then when I was a little older we learned to be Airplane Spotters.  Once a week we would go to the roof of the Courthouse and report a description of every plane that passed over.  We really felt that we were contributing to the war effort and maybe we were.  You younger ones who are reading this should know that this was a very patriotic war.  There was not a lot of grumbling about we should not be fighting there in Japan and Europe.  There were a lot of young men volunteering to go into the service (although there was a draft too) because they felt it was the right thing to do.  The United States of America had been attacked and we were not going to let them get away with it.

Once a month on weekends they would truck in young soldiers from Camp Polk in Leesville and there would be a dance for them in City Park at the Teen-Age Center.  My friends and I were all too young to go to these parties (the girls had to be 18) but there were lots of older sisters and cousins who went.  We were very jealous.  On Sundays there would be service men all over town.  Some were invited to homes for Sunday dinner and a lot of them would be in the park or just wandering around town.  All hoping to meet girls or having dates with girls they had met at the dance.

Later in the war there was a Prisoner of  War camp in St. Martinville, 8 miles from New  Iberia.  The camp was in a large State Park there.  We used to go to the park for picnics.  The POW camp was set up in a large clearing in front of the Lodge which was a restaurant in the park.  The camp was surrounded by a hurricane fence (not barbed wire) and you could walk right up to it.  I’m sure there were guards there but I don’t remember ever seeing them.  The prisoners were all Europeans, mostly Germans and Italians, just walking around the yard and looking back at us.  The prisoners were young, 18, 19, 20, and the boys would pass them cigarettes through the fence.  We would try to speak with them but they didn’t speak English.  They would smile at us and try to communicate and thank the guys for the cigarettes.  It was summer and most of them were wearing their heavy wool uniforms, but there were big oak trees in the yard and there was some shade.  They weren’t too bad off.  They were treated well and they were no longer in battle and they had survived the war.  Many years later in Italy, our gondolier told us that he had been a POW in the US and it was the best thing ever happened to him.

My “Gang”

That’s the way we referred to ourselves.  In the 40’s the word “gang” did not have the connotation that it has today.

By the mid high school years my bunch of friends was firmly established.  This is going to sound conceited but in order to describe us I have to be.  We were the “in” crowd.  Sounds snooty?  Well, maybe, but believe me its better to be “in” than “out”.  We had our special place in the school yard under a huge, old oak tree on the New Iberia High School campus.  We were not all in the same grade nor did we all go to NIHS, but most of us did.  A couple of the girls went to Mount Carmel Academy and some of the boys went to St. Peters – the two Catholic schools.

I looked forward to going to school everyday not because I was such a bookworm (I wasn’t) but because it was the center of our social life, that’s where my friends were, that’s where the fun was.  The dating years were beginning.

I’m going to be mentioning names from here on so allow me to introduce you to my friends.
Maridel Viator – her Dad was the Mayor of New Iberia
Armine Dennison – her sister was married to my Uncle Knox
Pat de la Houssaye – her Dad owned a restaurant
Laura (Sis) Lamperez – don’t remember what her Dad did
Joan Ann Minvielle – her Dad owned an insurance agency
Patsy Henry – her Dad was a railroad official
Myrna Trappey – her Dad owned Trappeys Foods
Joyce Oubre – her Dad owned an insurance company
Evelyn Breaux – her Dad owned an electrical contracting company
Bonnie Quereau – never knew her Dad, he left when she was very little
Maxine Scharff
Donald Bonin – his Dad worked for the Frederic Hotel
James Coburn – don’t know what his Dad did
Gene Dauterive  - his Father was the Doctor who delivered me
Larry Dietlein – his Dad owned a wholesale foods business
Sammy Glorioso – his folks owned an Italian restaurant.  I loved eating there
Walter (Waty) Gordy – his family owned the Jefferson Island salt mines
Bill Gordy – and Waty were 1st cousins. Same family business
Wil Labauve – his Dad was a sugar cane farmer
Orres Leblanc – his Dad owned service stations
F.J. Lungaro – don’t know what his Dad did 
Pat Neff – his Father was in sales
Rene Patout – his family owned the Frederic Hotel and oil interests
Thurston Rader – don’t know
Edmond (Buddy) Rose – his Dad owned a Dental Lab
Earl Romero – don’t know
H.S Sealy, III – his Father was in oil
Paul Veazey – his Dad owned an ice cream company
Alonzo Walter – his Father was a Pharmacist
Willard Rushing – don’t know
Paul Lebourgeois – his Dad was a doctor, EENT
Joe Prentice – his Dad was in the oil business
Howard (U.P.) Ferguson – His Dad was a roughneck in the oilfields (gasp!!).  U.P. came into our bunch in our Senior year when I started  “going steady” with him.  He had always gone around with a different crowd.  My bunch didn’t like it much when I started dating him.  I didn’t care---he was good looking and the Captain of the football team and he had eyes for me and me for him.  Reluctantly, they welcomed him into the gang.  They liked him just fine, he was a football star, a basketball star, a jock.  I think perhaps  they were a little jealous.

Now you have met my friends.  As you can see there were more boys than girls and we girls liked it that way.

Memory Flashes

Estorge Drugstore, Kahn’s Pharmacy – they had soda fountains where we had cherry Cokes, ice cream sodas and fudge Sundays.  I bought my first lipstick at Kahn’s, it was Coty-Light.  Five & Ten Cent stores Morgan & Lindsay and Lows and they actually had things that cost a nickel or a dime.  I used to buy black licorice candy there.  It was loose in a bin behind glass and the clerk would scoop a nickels worth into a bag for you.
The movie theatres (we didn’t call them that, we called them the “picture show”) the Essanee, the Palace and the Evangeline.  The drive-ins came a little later.  Wahen we were teen-agers the girls always sat one seat apart at the movies so the boys could come and sit with the girl of his choice, for that day or week.
The “movie stars”  Lana Turner, Rita Hayworth, Betty Grable, Tyrone Power, Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Robert Taylor.  Beautiful faces and bodies that we all hoped to look like someday.  My Mother wanted me to be Shirley Temple but I wanted to be Susan Hayward.
Parking under the trees at Veazey’s – The Freezer – and honking for car service for ice cream and soft drinks.  Sunday dinners at the Frederick Hotel, weekday lunches at Mother Deare’s restaurant, chili at Provosts, spaghetti and meatballs at Glorioso’s , anything you wanted at de la Houssaye’s, Bar-B-Q sandwiches at the Green Lantern.  Picnics in the park at St. Martinville and New Iberia City Park.  The Yellow Bowl in Jeanerette.  Christmas Eve and New Years Eve at Deares.  Bourbon and Coke was the drink of the day.  Proms and house parties.
The girls wore pleated skirts and sweaters, sometimes with the cardigans buttoned down the back, brown and white saddle oxfords (sometimes penny loafers) and socks for school and sports events.  We never, ever wore pants to school.  For dates we “dressed up”, pretty dresses and stockings and high heels and always wore hats to church on Sunday.  The guys dressed up for dates too, jacket and tie and always smelled of Vitalis (a hair dressing for those of you who are too young).  They wore slacks and sport shirts to school.  The girls wore shorts and Capri pants to picnics, etc. with T-shirts and sometimes halter tops and midriffs.  I cannot find one single picture of any of us in blue jeans.  They just were not fashionable in our time.  The formal dances and proms where the girls had floor length ball gowns worn off the shoulder with full, billowy skirts and the guys brought us corsages and borrowed the family car to take us where we were going.
“Going steady” could last for a week, a year or a lifetime – like Armine and Donald, Evelyn and H.S. and Bonnie and Paul.  A girl wore a guys Senior ring all wound up with adhesive tape to make that manly ring fit her dainty finger.  We didn’t realize how symbolic this really was.

The Teen-Age Center

This was our home away from home in the summer and on weekends.  It was a large building in City Park across from the swimming pool. The Center was started in 1944 and my friend Maridel was the first President and Orres was the VP. Many of our summer days were spent at the pool but our nights were at the Teen-Age Center.  We danced – slow dances and jitterbug (nowadays they call it swing dancing, we never called it that.  Swing was the music of the 1930’s.  Jitterbug came in our time the 1940’s.)  We listened to and danced to the Big Bands, Tommy Dorsey, Glen Miller, Harry James, etc.  We didn’t usually have dates to go there.  Most of the guys didn’t have cars yet.  We would all just meet there and dance and drink Cokes and have fun.  Sometimes the boys would walk us home other times our folks would pick us up.  The Center was watched over by two sisters, old maid school teachers who watched us VERY closely.  It was all good clean fun.
We also had a lot of house parties.  I especially remember a lot of parties at Evelyn Breaux’s house.  We always had fun there and her parents were glad to have us.  The house parties were almost always at the homes of the girls, but later on when we got older the home of Larry Dietlein was a party center.  More about that later.

Most of us came from small families.  Probably because we were born during the depression years.  Eleven of us were an only child and the rest had no more than two siblings except for Rene Patout and Armine Dennison who came from families of eight.

We had FUN.  The high school years were carefree.  We had no drug problems that seem to plague kids today and for most of us no financial problems.  Our fathers all made good livings and our mothers did not work.  NONE of our parents were divorced.  We went to football games, picnics in the park, proms where we wore beautiful new evening gowns and the boys brought us corsages and the movies – lots and lots of movies and the Teen Center and house parties.  It was safe to walk anywhere and at anytime of the day or night.  Our house was never locked in the daytime, only at night and not until after I came in from a date – so, I never had a key to our house, I never needed one.  My Mother never went to bed until I was in the house.  My Dad pretended to be asleep but I know that he wasn’t.

The guys that I dated frequently were:  F.J. Lungaro (good dancer), Larry Dietlein, Gene Dauterive and Paul Lebourgeois.  The guys that I “went steady” with were Paul Veazey, Buddy Rose and U.P. Ferguson.  I was going out with Paul Veazey in our Sophomore year when he went off to school to Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville, GA.  That took care of “going steady” with him but we did write to each other and we dated again when he came home for Christmas.

I remember we had a date, Paul and I, on New Years Eve and I wore a beautiful sapphire bracelet that my parents had given me for Christmas.  When I got home that night we discovered that my bracelet was not on my arm.  Instead of waiting until morning my mother phoned Paul’s mother, they were friends, in the middle of the night to see if the bracelet was in their car.  So Paul describes his mother putting on her fur coat and a kerchief over her nightgown to go outside to look for the bracelet and called my mother back to say that it had indeed been found on the floor of the car.  Why didn’t she send Paul out to look for it?  He was an only child – what else can I say.

How can I describe my relationship with Larry Dietlein – we never went steady, we never declared that we were in love, but we truly liked one another, we were special . Larry was three years older than I so by the time I was a Junior in High School he was off to college at LSU in pre-med.  It was always somehow understood that when he came home on holidays, if I wasn’t  going steady with someone, that I would be his date.  It started when I was fourteen.  St Peters had a Spring Ball every year and the Senior boys would run for King, Duke, etc.  He really wanted to be King but got Grand Duke.  This was a very formal event.  He wore a tuxedo and I had a beautiful white formal.  For the occasion he sent me a corsage, my very first Orchid, white with a yellow throat and the card read “To the real Queen Carmella”.  A girl never forgets the guy who gave her her first Orchid.  Larry gave me many orchids after that for many different events, birthdays, Christmas and my graduation night even though I had a date with someone else.  He finished LSU and went off to Harvard for his medical degree, then to Oxford in England as a Rhodes Scholar and I went off to Dominican College in New Orleans and that was the end of that.  He never lived in New Iberia again but we stayed in touch over the years.  When my son was born he sent me an Orchid and a silver baby fork to match my silver pattern.  He had a brilliant career in medicine.  First in heart research and finally with NASA as physician to the Astronauts.  Larry died in 2002.  To this day no other man in my life has ever given me Orchids.

The summer before my Senior year in high school Buddy Rose and I were going steady.  When I was a Sophomore and Buddy was a Junior he became very ill with Polio.  For a time it was thought that he would not pull through.  While he was so sick in the hospital in New Iberia all of our bunch went to Mass every morning for weeks to pray for his recovery.  He did pull through but was paralyzed so he was sent to a Polio Center founded by President Franklin Roosevelt in Warm Springs, Georgia to recuperate and have therapy.  He was being treated there when President Roosevelt died there.  Buddy was there for a year.  He had been a very active guy, solidly built, a football player and all around athlete.  But he would never walk without crutches again.  When he finally came home none of us had seen him for over a year so we all gathered at his house to welcome him home.  It took him a while to get out of the car – it was only his legs that were paralyzed now, he had braces on both legs and two crutches.  We were all outside waiting to greet him but once he was standing there was an awkward moment when no one knew what to say or do.  After a few seconds, to break the ice, I went to him and gave him a kiss.  That got everyone moving, the other girls kissed him too, the guys shook his hand and slapped him on the back and the tension was broken.  But that first kiss stayed with the two of us and we began to date and then to go steady.  We went out all that summer then Buddy went off to college at Tulane and I started back to my last year in high school.  I was not supposed to be dating anyone else but when you are fifteen that’s very hard to do.

Buddy’s parents had bought a house in New Orleans and they lived there while he was at Tulane so he wasn’t able to come home often.  Along came a boy named U.P Ferguson.  He began to hang around with our bunch (which he hadn’t done before)and hanging around me.  We were attracted.  U.P. was tall and handsome and a star athlete.  By the time Buddy came home for the Christmas holidays U.P. and I had already had a few dates, but I was still going to be Buddy’s date for the holidays.  Then came Christmas Eve (1945) and we all went to a dance at Deeres, a place we all frequented.  The other guys always asked me to dance because Buddy couldn’t and didn’t mind.  But this night U.P. kept me away from the table much too much and Buddy became jealous and angry and went out to sit in the car.  We broke up that night.  I know that spending so much time with another guy  that night was not the right  thing to do.  But I was very young and hindsight doesn’t change anything.  I have to say this, I’m very happy that I let Buddy go.  He has turned out to be a very grumpy old man and I know there is a special place in Heaven for the girl he married.

U.P. and I went steady all the rest of my Senior year.  I wore his Golden Gloves charm on a chain and he took me to my Senior Prom on graduation night.  We broke up sometime in the summer after graduation and I really do not remember why.  In September I went off to Dominican and a while after that U.P. joined the Navy.  He played football for the Navy and then had a great career in professional football playing for the Los Angeles Rams and the Greenbay Packers.  He is in the NFL Football Hall of Fame..  U.P died in 2005.

As I mentioned before we went to Galveston almost every summer.  We were in Galveston the day World War II ended on August 14, 1945. That was something to behold!  Galveston was always swarming with sailors in the war years.  When the news came out that the Japanese had surrendered there was bedlam.  People were celebrating in the streets and the sailors were grabbing girls and kissing and hugging.  My cousin Prissy and I were out in the street in front of the hotel   I was 14(almost 15) and she was 26.  When my Dad realized that we were outside he came immediately looking for us, took us each by the arm and brought us back to the hotel lobby with the command to sit and not move.  We had been having a ball but he was not going to have any more sailors kissing us.  Shucks!!!

My Senior year in high school started the September after the war ended.  None of the guys in our gang had gone in the military during the war because they were still too young.  So, off to college they went while us younger ones (a year or so younger) stayed in school to take our college prep courses.  There was never any discussion  among us about not going to college.  That was a given, we were all going to further our education and we all did.

In the Spring of my Senior year I was chosen to represent my school at a scholastic rally in the category of Original Oratory.  This was a huge competition and Seniors from schools from all over the state of Louisiana were taking part.  It was held on the campus of the University of Southwest Louisiana in Lafayette.  For my category we were to write and deliver a speech on any subject that we chose.  Since the end of the war was still fresh in our minds I chose to write my speech about the bombing of Hiroshima  and the end results of the use of the atom bomb.  I won that competition and was awarded a scholarship to USL.  It was a great honor and I was very proud of that accomplishment. 

I graduated from high school on May 25, 1946.  The graduation exercises were held outside in the football stadium.  We didn’t wear caps and gowns.  The girls wore white evening dresses and the guys wore white suits.  My Mom and Dad were there and some of my aunts and uncles and cousins and our gang.  The prom was going to be held in the gym after the ceremony.  I had a date with U.P. for the prom that night but I can still see him and Larry standing a little apart from each other watching the ceremony.  I had two corsages that night.  The white gardenias that U.P. had for me I wore in my hair and the orchid that Larry sent me was on my wrist.

A Sad Summer
Two weeks after graduation, on a warm June night in 1946, I was awakened by the voices of my parents.  They were in their nightclothes and my Father was on the front porch gasping for air and having pains in his chest.  My Mother was on the phone calling our doctor who came to the house very quickly although it was the middle of the night.  By the time he arrived the pains had subsided and they sat on the living room sofa and the doctor examined my Dad.  After a while Dr. Pharr said, “Julius, you have had a heart attack and you must relax and have bed rest for a few weeks”.  No, they did not send him to the hospital and as far as I know no medication was prescribed.  So, my very active Father did as he was told and took it easy at home.  We put  a small bed for him on the screened porch and he spent a part of each day there.  It was cooler and he could watch people and things go by.  The doctor would check on him a couple of times a week and he seemed to be feeling well.  A few weeks later my Dad and I were sitting on the side of his bed and I was trimming his fingernails and suddenly he just laid back on the pillows and he was gone.  I was only 15 years old but I knew immediately that I had just lost my Father.  At that moment I felt very, very alone.  My Mother was in another part of the house and Bobbie was on the porch reading and I had to go out there and tell them.
The day was July 26, 1946 and my Father had died at the age of 70.  
His funeral was held on July 28th and a different era of my life began.
The rest of that summer was sad and  difficult.  My Mother was inconsolable.  She had always depended on my Dad for everything.  She had never even written a check or paid a bill, he took care of all of that.  I had to grow up fast that summer because she began to lean on me and I was not equipped or ready to try to take his place.  My Father had wanted me to go to Dominican College in New Orleans because I was so young and he knew that the nuns would keep a very close eye on us.  I had already passed my entrance exams and everything was set for me to go in September.  After my Father died I knew that I was in for a confrontation with my Mother about school and I dreaded the day she would bring it up. I knew that she would want me to stay at home and commute to school in Lafayette every day instead of going to Dominican.  I knew that I was going to school in New Orleans.  Even at that young age I recognized that I had to make the break and go AWAY to school.  I could not let my Mother take over my life and I knew that she would if I let her.  So, when the day came and she brought up the subject of my staying at home I stood my ground and told her that I was going to Dominican as my Father wanted me to do and though she tried to lay a lot of guilt on me I was not going to back down.  I must admit that after a few days she began to get used to the idea and she took it pretty well.

College Days

I started college in September, 1946.  That was an exciting time.  There were other of my life long friends who were starting college with me.  Evelyn Breaux, Margarite Elias, Julia Doumit, Babette Aubrey (remember, I bit her on the hand when we were little?).  We were going to live in the dormitory and we were on our own for the first time in our lives.
St Marys Dominican College for Women was located on the corner of St. Charles Avenue and Broadway in New Orleans, LA.  It had a beautiful campus and the dorm was a gray stone building at 580 Broadway.  Freshman courses were chosen with the help of a counselor and most were required except if you chose to take a foreign language.  I elected to study Spanish.  The good Sisters really loaded up our schedules.  I guess they figured it would be easier to keep an eye on us if we were in class all day, which we were.  For the first semester of my Freshman year I carried 18 semester hours.  The second semester of my Freshman year and both semesters of my Sophomore year I carried 21 hours.  By the time I was a Junior I made out my own schedule and carried 15 hours.

Sounds like a lot of work and study, and it was.  But I loved it there.  I loved being on my own, I loved living in the dorm with a bunch of other girls, even the long hours in class were rewarding.  Domican was in the University section of  New Orleans which meant that Tulane and Loyola were only a block and a half away and Audubon Park was across the street from Tulane.  So although I was attending an all female school there were plenty of guys around.
The dorm of course had rules.  Freshman had to be in by 7:30 PM on week nights and 10:30 PM on Friday and Saturday.  There were ways to get around this.  We could get permission to stay out , on weekends , with a relative or friend who lived in New Orleans and that we had a letter from our parents saying that it was OK.  There was a cousin of my Mother who said I could spend the night with her and one of the girls had an older married sister with whom we could stay, etc.  Believe me, there were not too many weekends when we were in by 10:30.  After you got to be an upper classman the rules were relaxed.
My first roommate was a girl named Carmen Escoda from Argentina.  She had come to school mainly to learn English and I was studying Spanish so it was thought that we could help each other.  It didn’t work out that way at all.  There were three other girls there from Argentina and they were all homesick.  So they spent all their time in my room crying and speaking Spanish to each other so nobody was learning anything!  After about a week of this I spoke to the House Mother and changed rooms and let the girls from Argentina have each other.  Incidentally, they all went back to Argentina by Thanksgiving and never came back.
My next roommate was named Jackie Weaver.  What a character she was!!  Cute as a button with red hair and green eyes and rotten to the core.   She was a wild one.  She had definitely not come for an education---she was looking for boys and she found them.  She didn’t have permission to stay anywhere on weekends so when she had a date she would simply stay out all night and wait for them to open the Chapel doors for 6:00 AM Mass and slip into the dorm through the back stairs.  It was only a matter of time before she got caught and of course she did and the nuns shipped her back home pronto.  So by Christmas of my first semester in college I had two roommates who were, and I quote the House Mother, “not college material”. 
Then there was Joanie.  Her name was Joan Tijerino.  We had become friends in the dorm social room and had classes together .  Joanie was from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.  Her Father had died  the year before and her Dad’s rich Aunt was sending her to school.  Her Aunt would not send her the money to go home for holidays so Joanie would come to New Iberia and spend the holidays with me or with Julia.  So after Jackie was kicked out of school Joanie and I became roommates and we roomed together for the rest of our college days.  Joanie was small and olive skinned with blue-black hair and dark eyes, very pretty and lots of fun.  We got along beautifully.
The rooms were divided in to suites.  Which meant that there were two bedrooms with a bath between.  So you had a roommate and two suite-mates.  Our suite-mates were Ina Claire Thevenot  from Cottonport and Mickey Smith from Alexandria.  We all became fast friends and had many adventures and misadventures together.
College was fun.  The classes were interesting, most of them anyway.  But we did have a great social life.  There were lots of guys around and plenty of dates.  Some of the guys we dated often and some were one-timers.  There were guys from my New Iberia bunch going to Tulane and I dated some of them.  One was Bill Gordy who took me to the Black and White formal for his fraternity and we double dated with David Treen who later was to become Governor of Louisiana.  Larry Dietlein was in pre-med at LSU and he would invite me to Baton Rouge for football games and parties.  My good friend Maridel was at LSU then and I would stay with her in her dorm on those weekends.  There were parties, Sorority and Fraternity parties, formal dances at the Jung Roof and Mardi Gras Balls.
Then one October weekend in 1946 Margarite Elias I went to a frat party, I don’t remember who our dates were, and we met a guy named Bill Smith who was going to Tulane.  He asked Margarite and me if we would double date with him and a friend who lived in the same boarding house with him.  He said that his friend had been Mr. New Orleans (a body builders contest) so I chose to have the date with him and Margarite would go out with Bill.  So my first (and last) blind date turned out to be Tommy O’Hare who would later be my husband.
Tommy and I continued to date but I didn’t date him exclusively.  He was a Navy veteran of World War II attending Tulane on the GI Bill, studying Mechanical Engineering and in 1946 he was 23 years old.  That seemed very old to a 15 year old so I told him I was 17.  He drove a 1939 Mercury convertible that was yellow with four black fenders.  A few months after we met we drove to City Park and he taught me how to drive in that old car with a stick shift on the floor.  The drivers seat leaned so far back that he had to pile his engineering books behind me so I could reach the brakes.  We figured if I could drive that car I could drive anything.        
 
In the Fall of 1947, my Sophomore year, I experienced my first hurricane.  In those days the storms were not given names but we were warned that one was coming.  All of the day students were sent home and the girls who lived on campus were confined to the dorm.  The storm hit that night.  We all felt very safe in that  strong stone building and so we were, except---the rooms were arranged with one large window with desks on either side and a radiator under the window for heat.  I was fascinated watching the storm and took my pillow and sat on  the radiator for a better look.  While I was sitting there the House Mother, Sister Alexaidia, looked in on us and told me it was a really bad idea to be sitting on that metal radiator.  How right she was!  Soon after I got off the thing an electrical wire on a pole outside the window tore loose and the wind blew it against the building and that radiator lit up like a neon sign!  I would have had one charred butt!
For two days after the storm we couldn’t leave the dorm because there were trees and electrical wires down everywhere.  We were getting very bored sitting around in the dorm so this was when my roommates decided to teach me to smoke.  The cigarettes were Lucky Strikes.  They were strong and made me a little dizzy but I persisted because we all thought it was very sophisticated to smoke.  Everyone in the movies smoked a lot and if it looked good on Lana Turner I thought it would look good on me.  So, at the age of almost 17 I started smoking.  Most of the other girls had started smoking in High School but I had never smoked until then.

While we were still confined to the dorm Tommy and some of his friends came outside the dorm and brought us hamburgers and fries from the Toddle House.  (Toddle House made the best hamburgers in the world!)  The guys couldn’t come in to the dorm so we rigged up our sheets and dropped them down (we were on the second floor) to get our food.  Sister Alexaidia later told us she saw us doing this but decided to pretend she didn’t.  Those contraband burgers were delicious.

Some Random Thoughts While At Dominican
The dormitory was located at 580 Broadway just off the corner of  St. Charles Avenue.  My room was on the second floor, looking out on Broadway.  Across the street from the dorm was the French Consulate.  The Consul General and his family lived there.  They had two sons, one in his second year of college and the other a Senior in High School.  The two boys shared a room on the second floor of their home which put their windows directly opposite ours.  They sat at their desks every night to study and we did the same.  We had never met them (we did later) but they waved to us every night and of course we waved back and we always wondered what they were like..  Later the older of the two turned out to be a world famous author of the best selling novel “Is Paris Burning”.  His name is Dominique LaPierre.

In the spring of my Sophomore year Consul LaPierre asked the nuns if they would have a party to introduce some young Frenchmen to the “young ladies”.  The French Navy training ship the “Jeanne d’Arc” was coming to the port of New Orleans and the Consulate wanted to do something to entertain the young officers in training.  The Sisters consented (of course they were going to chaperone) and the party was to be held on the main floor of the dorm.
.
The big night came----Wow!  I wish you could have seen those guys.  They came in, fifty of them, in white full dress officers uniforms.  They were gorgeous and THEY WERE FRENCH and we were dazzled!  The music started and they came over and asked us to dance and it was a dream party.  Did I mention that they did not speak English?  It didn’t matter at all.
  
Before the evening ended some of us had  paired off with some of the young men and they invited us to a dinner-dance the next night on their ship.  The young officer who invited me was named Anton  Remy.  My roommate Joanie was invited and so were our suite mates.  When we arrived at the dock the next night the ship looked beautiful.  The main deck was strung with lights and lanterns there were long tables with white tablecloths set with silver and crystal.  It was magical and the sailor boys looked even better than they had the night before.  The French Consul and his sons were there (we finally met them that night) and it was a night one would never forget.  Anton gave me a pin that night as a parting gift.  It is white and gold cloisonné with the shield of the “Jeanne d’Arc”. They sailed away the next day and I never saw him again, of course, but I still have that pin.

Some last thoughts on college.  I haven’t written much about my studies.  I started out as an English major just because I enjoyed writing , literature, etc.  In the second semester of my Sophomore year I included Elementary Education as my minor with the idea of becoming a teacher.  I especially enjoyed the classes in Educational Psychology and later would add a second minor in Psychology.  My grades were good and I was happy being in school but----

By the end of my Sophomore year Tommy and I were going steady and we became engaged on Christmas of 1947 .  He was still going to Tulane and wasn’t due to graduate until May of 1950.  We decided to get married in the Spring of 1949.  I stayed in college until January of 1949 (I was then a second semester Junior) but I was going to be married in four months and planning the wedding took hold and wanting to concentrate on that I left school a year before graduation. 
 
Wedding Fever
The next four months were hectic.  My close friends Maridel, Joyce, Joan Ann, Evelyn and I were all getting married in the coming Spring and Summer.  So there was a whirlwind of parties and bridal showers for all of us.  We were all in each others weddings as Bridesmaids.
Tommy and I were married on May 29th  in 1949.  I was 18 and he was 26.  The ceremony was held in St. Peters Catholic Church in New Iberia.  My bridesmaids were Maridel Viator, Joyce Oubre, Patsy Henry, Joan Ann Minvielle and Ina Claire Thevenot, Maid of Honor.  My Dad’s brother Max Scharff walked me down the aisle.  I clearly remember he was more nervous than I and just before we started the walk to the altar he turned to me and said “Honey, are you sure you want to do this?” and my answer was, “Uncle Max they’re playing the Wedding March, lets go.”

We spent our honeymoon at the Edgewater Beach Hotel, in Gulfport, Mississippi.  Our first apartment was on Ridgeway Ave. in Metairie.  It was in a brand new duplex and had a living room, 1 bedroom, a bath and a kitchen.   Tommy had classes at Tulane in the morning and worked at Standard Supply and Hardware in the afternoons.  We lived on his part-time salary and the GI Bill which paid a big $150.00 a month.  In 1949 that was enough to live on.

In September of that year (1949) I became pregnant.  When I went to the doctor for my first exam he discovered that, yes, I was pregnant but also I had a tumor on my ovary.  He told us that I needed to have surgery to remove the tumor because the hormones and the growing baby would accelerate the growth of the tumor and this would kill the baby.  With the surgery I had a 50-50 chance of saving the baby.  So, in October I had the surgery which went well and the tumor was benign.  It looked as though I would not lose the baby and after a week in the hospital I went home to recuperate.  But it was not meant to be.  The day after Christmas I began to hemorrhage.  We rushed to the hospital but I had a miscarriage that night.  I can't find the words to tell how much this saddened me.  I had been anxious to become a mother.  The doctor told me that I should wait at least a year before trying to have another child and so that was the way it was going to be.
 
Since we were not going to have a baby for a while I decided that I needed something to do.  I had made friends with the young wife of one of Tommy's friends.  Their names were Walter and Rosemarie Stanley.  Rosemarie and I became fast friends and spent a lot of time together while our husbands were at work in the evenings at a small gym they had opened.  Rosemarie and I saw an ad in the paper one day for a modeling school in New Orleans and decided that we would have a try at it.  We had an interview with Audrey Stark who owned the modeling agency and she thought we were both pretty enough (and had good legs) and we started the classes which were to last three months.  The classes were really lots of fun for two 19 year olds.  Make-up, hair, stage modeling, photographic modeling, etc.  After the schooling was done the agency sent us on jobs.  We did fashion shows, wholesale modeling, advertising shows on and on.  We didn't make much money but it was fun and we did get paid.

We moved to another duplex apartment in the Fall of 1950.  A cousin of Rosemarie's who I had gone to college with told us that the other half of the house that she and her husband lived in was vacant and we thought it would be good to live near some friends.  The house was on Wingate Avenue in Gentilly and that was a little closer to Tommy's work.  I decided that I needed to get work more steady than modeling.  I had enough college credits to get my teaching certificate so I contacted the Catholic Archdiocese education office to apply for a position.  I was hired to begin teaching after the Christmas Holidays at St. Dominics School in Lakeview.  My first class was Second grade.  I discovered that I loved teaching.  My salary was a whopping $150.00 a month.

In the Spring of 1951 I became pregnant again.  My baby was due the first week in November so I told the nuns that I would not be teaching there after the Spring semester.    I had an easy pregnancy this time.  No morning sickness or anything uncomfortable.  Everything went as it was supposed to and on Monday, October 29, 1951 at 8:37 AM I gave birth to Thomas Joseph O'Hare, III.  He weighed 8lbs, 1 oz. And was a beautiful, healthy little boy.  When Tim was four months old we moved to our first house.  We bought a house in a new subdivision called Gentilly Woods and moved into a brand new house.  We lived there until Tim was four years old then decided it was time to get a place close to Kaiser Aluminum so we had a house built in Chalmette and we would live there for a long time.

In the years that followed I was a stay at home Mom.  I had two more miscarriages so Tim was destined to be my only child.  I went back to teaching when Tim was in the First Grade.  I got a position at Our Lady of Prompt Succor school in Chalmette teaching 3rd grade and that worked out well because Tim went to that school so we had the same hours and holidays.  

I taught school for a while longer then when Tim got a little older I decided to go out into the business world to try to make a better salary than the parochial schools could pay.  I had quite a few jobs:  Edna Loposer Employment Agency- I worked with male college graduates to place them in jobs; K-9 Security Co.- Secretary to Colonel Gene Dooling.  Gene Dooling at that time was very much into politics and was interested in getting the security detail for the building of the Superdome.  He was backing Representative Edwin Edwards who was starting his first campaign for Govenor of Louisiana.  We had a number of meetings with Rep. Edwards and got to know him and Gene gave a huge party for him at the Royal Sonesta hotel and put me in charge of planning and executing this party for 500 people.  It was a great challenge and lots of fun putting on a party of this magnitude.  It was a great success and the day after the party Edwin Edwards asked my boss to lend me to him for the rest of his campaign to be his executive secretary in his New Orleans campaign office in the Montleone hotel.  Working in politics was a whole new education in the way politicians think and act.  Edwin was great to work for and was very laid back and calm with his dealings with everyone and he had a wonderful sense of humor.  He won the race for Govenor and went on to be elected to four terms in that office.

In 1972 my two good friends Dot Brandon and Carole Saunders began to talk with me about taking a trip to Europe.  We had dreamed about doing this for a long time and we decided that now was the time.  So, I went back to teaching for a year to save money to take this trip in the fall of 1973.  More about that later.  I also went back to college that year while teaching 5th grade at St. Marks in Chalmette.  I went back to my alma mater, Dominican College.  I took evening classes and had to drive three times a week from Chalmette to St. Charles Ave. and was in class from 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM.  It wasn't easy but earning a degree was a goal worth striving for.

It is very difficult to write about a marriage that failed.  Tommy was and is a good man.  We just grew in different directions and did not agree on what our futures would hold.  We had an amicable divorce  in 1982 after 32 years of marriage.

The Europe Years 

The first trip to Europe was in July, 1973.  For reasons I don't remember Dot could not go with us so it was Carole and I.  We had a wonderful travel agent who was older and a very experienced world traveler.  Her name was Sheila Weilbacher.  I will never forget her because before we left on the trip she took Carole and me under her wing and really educated us about traveling in Europe.  She told us about airlines, restaurants, hotels, money, what kind of clothes to bring, etc.  We were travel novices and her advice was invaluable.

We booked the trip with American Express and it was a motorcoach tour with a couple of train rides also.  I know that everyone says that this kind of tour is too regimented, but for people who have never been to Europe it is the way to go.  To begin with, the motorcoach goes through the small villages, the mountain passes, etc. that you would never see if you were flying.  The other plus is the Tour Managers.  These people are highly educated, multi lingual (they must be fluent in a minimum of five languages) men and women.  Many of them are college professors who do this in the summer to supplement their incomes.  The same is true of the guides on the day tours in the cities.  It is also interesting in that each may have a particular area of interest or expertise so that you hear many different viewpoints.  For instance, in being guided through a cathedral one guide may go in to detail about the architecture, another about the history, another about the art.  That way you really know what you are looking at and not just walking around in a fog or getting lost.  And believe me if Carole and I had been on our own  we would have been lost many times.  More about that later.  

On this trip we were scheduled to visit France, Monaco, Italy, Austria, Liechtenstien, Switzerland, Germany,  Holland and England.  We flew from New Orleans to New York then landed in Paris.  We were met at DeGaulle airport by our Tour Manager, a British lady named Eileen Mitchell.  On the ride in to Paris the first thing we could see from a distance was the Eiffel Tower.  We were REALLY in Paris, France!!!!  All the movies that you see and everything you read cannot prepare you for really, really being there.  I won't go into details of everything we saw and did but there are a couple of experiences worth telling about:
On our first morning in Rome we both awoke very early.  We were scheduled for a tour of the city later in the day but we were anxious to get going.  We knew that our hotel was very near 
the Vatican and we could see the dome of St. Peters Basilica from our window so we decided to get dressed and walk there.  We found our way to  St Peters Square easily and slowly walked to the massive doors of the most famous church in the world.  When we entered the basilica it was cool and dim inside.  In the early morning hours before the hoards of tourists arrived it was very quiet except for the soft murmurs of Masses being said at some of the side altars.  There was a faint aroma of candles and incense.  A few steps forward and we turned to our right and there before us bathed in a soft light was Michelangelo's “Pieta”.  This was before it had to be put behind glass so there were no barriers between it and us and we were the only two people standing in front of it.  At that moment for Carol and me it was not just a magnificent piece of sculpture, it was a grieving Mother holding her dead son.  The beauty of it and the meaning behind it evoked  deep emotions.  We turned to each other and I knew before I looked that there would be tears in her eyes as there were in mine.  It was one of those moments that stay with you for the rest of your life.

Finding our way back to the hotel was a different matter.  We had no St. Peters dome to guide us and of course we got lost.  We turned up a number of streets thinking that each was the right one but had to retrace our steps several times.  We were beginning to panic because it was almost time for our city tour to begin.  But, after several false starts we found the hotel (incidentally it was named the Michelangelo).  The motorcoach was standing out front and the Tour Manager was inside calling our room but we made it just in time.  Our guide that day was pretty unforgettable too.  His name was Dr. Leonardo Rossi, he was a professor at the University of Rome, had written many books on the history of the area and he looked like Rossano Brazzi!!  We hung on his every word.

The second story I think is worth telling took place on the second trip to Europe in 1974.  This time it is Dot, Carol and me and we are again in Italy, Rome to be exact.  We had scheduled a tour of the oldest part of the city.  A friend had told us of a wonderful restaurant on the Piazza Navona and we decided that when the tour ended that day we would have lunch there.  The tour ended at the Pantheon and when we came out we began to look for a taxi to take us to the Piazza.  I suddenly had this feeling that I knew how to get there and I told Dot and Carol that I thought we could walk there.  They both looked at me as though I was crazy but they went along with it.  We began to walk down this very narrow street to the left of the Pantheon and after about two blocks it looked like it was a dead end street because we could see a large three story building that looked as if it was at the end of the street.  They wanted to turn back but I insisted that we walk just a little further and when we got to the building the street was not a dead end but went around both sides of the building.  We walked around the building and came out on the Piazza Navona just as I knew we would.  My friends just stood there and stared at me.  Deja vue?  You betcha!

I have to say, at this point,  that between Italy and me it was love at first sight.  Everything about this country delighted me, the art, the architecture, the countryside, the wine, the food and the beauty of the people.  Many years before I ever went to Italy an artist friend of mine had told me that he believed that the northern Italians were the best looking people in the world and I agree with that whole-heartedly.  The language was coming to me easily, I couldn't speak it at that time, but for some reason I could understand most of what was said to me.  I knew that I would return to this country many times and I did.

Some thoughts on other countries in Europe:

I love the English people.  They are funny without meaning to be and that makes it funnier.  Their sense of humor is different from ours.  London is a wonderful city and the museums and galleries and the shopping are great.  The English countryside is beautiful and green and cool.  The palaces and gardens are magnificent.  An air of history is everywhere.  I went to London many times and learned my way around the city very well.  And though we ostensibly speak the same language the only time a taxi took me to the wrong place was in England.  I got to see the entire Royal Family one time.  It was the trip that I took with my old friend Mary Ann and we were in London for the Queen's Birthday parade.  Prince Philip and Prince Charles were riding horseback in front of the carriage that carried Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother Elizabeth, Princess Margaret Rose and Princess Ann.  It was a thrill!  The British really know how to do pageantry. 

France.  Paris is the most beautiful city I have ever seen.  Especially at night.  The city is laid out in almost perfect symmetry and the buildings are artistically lighted in the evening.  The Bateau Mouche (boats) glide up the River Seine by Notre Dame and soft music is playing and it is a very romantic place.  In the daytime the Tuilleries Gardens are a wonderful place to sit at a table outdoors and have a pate sandwich on french bread and a glass of wine.  And of course, the Louvre.  One could spend days there and never see all you wanted to see.  Outside of Paris the Palace of Versailles is a wonderment and the small french villages are lovely especially the ones on the mountainsides overlooking Nice and the ocean. 

Since I am of German decent on my Father's side I wish I could say that I really liked the Germans but that was not the case.  On an individual basis there were some nice and fun loving people, especially in the Hofbrau House in Munich.  Of course they are all very drunk in there so they are temporarily happy.  But on the whole I found them a somber and not very friendly people.  I like the Austrians better.

Back to Italy.  I have not written of my fascination with Venice.  To me it is a magical place and there is no place else in the world exactly like it.  One can walk the streets getting lost and lost again and come out on a piazza that you didn't know was there and it is more beautiful and interesting than the one before.  In the  Piazza San Marco you can spend the day exploring the Basilica, walking the piazza shopping the magnificent glass shops and jewelry shops or sitting at one of the sidewalk cafes watching the world go by and listening to music.  It has an air of mystery and romance like no other place that I have ever been.  On one trip I was there on the Feast of the Redeemer.  This is a very big day in Venice.  On the night of the feast there is a parade of gondolas and other small boats on the Grand Canal.    The boats are beautifully decorated and lighted.  Afterwards there is a spectacular fireworks display over the water.  The sounds, the colors reflected in the water are sights not soon forgotten.