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Feliciana Explorer • Tuesday, July 2, 2013 • Vol. 8, No. 27 • Published Weekly • Circulation 17,000 • felicianaexplorer.com • © 2013

EXPLOREREXPLORERFeliciana

Proud to be the Felicianas' only locally owned, managed, and staffed newspaper.

Take time to reflect on what freedom really meansHappy Independence Day!

Thursday is the Fourth of July, the 237th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the document that clearly and eloquently stated the reasons of the 13 colonies to separate from Great Britain and form a new nation, the United States of America.

The day will be celebrated around the country where U.S. Citizens recall the farmers and the lawyers, the scientists and the scholars who pledged their lives to one another with oaths and prayers, who vowed to cast off the shackles burdening them and their families, who spoke out boldly in pursuit of a nation like none other. Thanks to our founding fathers and the men and wom-en who have guarded their vision of a democratic society, we can gather freely, speak openly, worship as we please, and go within these United States with no fear that tyrants will oppress us.

However, these days it seems that the United States of Amer-ica has become a paradox of freedom and tyranny. We claim that

we have tremendous freedom (a term that many people today do not really understand the mean-ing of) because of the philosophical basis upon which this country was founded. It is assumed that individuals have rights, e.g., free speech, the right to bear arms, the right of a jury trial before our peers should the government try to imprison us, seize our property, or deprive us of our lives. Also, we have a Constitution that limits the powers of a central government to intrude into our lives and that our rights have been enshrined in the First 10 Amendments to our Constitution.

We are blessed, many other countries, like England and Canada, also have a Bill of Rights, but those rights are at the pleasure of the government. It states such right in their laws. Making theirs not so “unalienable” as our rights. Only the United States of America, in all of history, was founded on the assumption that the individual has rights that exist apart from the government (endowed by our creator) and not at the government’s pleasure. Then, in 1868, the Constitution was amended to say that even the individual states couldn’t violate our unalienable rights. These things form the basis of our freedom and are the reasons why the United States is the freest country on earth. But we as citizens have grown complacent, and allowed the government bureaucracy and select entrenched politicians to expand government under the premise that we can’t take care of ourselves. More and more agencies regulate us without juries - the IRS, local traffic ticket cameras operators, OSHA, EPA, and the Nation Security Agency (NSA) wire tapping surveillance programs that target every single person living in the United States. In violation of the founders of our country’s wishes, none of these allow trial by jury or our peers.

Whatever you do on Independence Day, don’t overlook the significance of what this holiday stands for. Get involved, get educated, work for freedom and liberty.

Daniel C. Duggan, Publisher

Feliciana Explorer Associate Publisher Named LaneRMC

Foundation DirectorTheresa Dold Payment has been

named Director of the Lane Region-al Medical Center Foundation.

She is responsible for the im-plementation and achievement of Foundation goals and objectives and working closely with founda-tion committees to manage and sup-port their activities, projects and programs.

Payment has more than 21 years of sales, marketing, writing and fundraising experience. Prior to this position she was associate publisher for the Zachary Post/Feliciana Ex-plorer. As a volunteer, she coor-dinated fundraising activities for Regional Arts Council of Zachary, Rotary International of Zachary, Cinderella Project of Baton Rouge, Cortana Kiwanis and St. John the Baptist Catholic Church.

Payment is currently a volunteer for the annual Zachary/Baker Re-lay for Life, Regional Arts Council of Zachary and is an Ambassador for the Zachary Chamber of Com-merce.

She received the Baton Rouge Women in Media 2011 Award of Excellence, and the Parenting Pub-lications of America Gold Award for feature and monthly column writing.

Theresa grew up in Zachary and lives there with her husband, Mark, and their four children, Landon, April, Emily and Dru. They are members of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church.

“Lane is very special to me”, says Theresa. “Three of my chil-dren were born here, making the hospital a part of some very special moments in my life. The mission of the hospital focuses on excellence integrity, compassion, respect and commitment; all of which I feel are essential is providing the best care for my family and the families of my community. I am honored to be a member of the Lane family.”

2 Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Email stories and photos to [email protected]

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EXPLOREREXPLORERFeliciana

4104 Main StreetZachary, LA 70791

Phone (225) 654-0122Fax (225) 208-1165

Deadline for news and advertising: Wednesday, 5 P.M.

Call for advertising rates.

Publisher & EditorDaniel Duggan

Graphic DesignerTina Adams

Account ExecutivesGeorgiana Walls

Ashley Evans

Contributing WriterJames Ronald Skains

Summer Party InternCalla Duggan

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Local WWII, Pearl Harbor Veteran Still Going Strong at 91 years of AgeBy James Ronald skains

“In 1939, I joined the Louisiana National Guard Bogalusa unit,’’ 91 year old Emmitt Clyde “Mr. E.C.” Howard told the Post. “It was a Calvary unit, and it didn’t take long for me to decide that I didn’t like riding horses that much.’’

“By 1940, everybody pretty well knew that we were fixing to go to war,’’ Howard continued. “I knew that I didn’t want to fight no war from the back of a horse so I hitch-hiked down to New Orleans and joined the Navy.’’

“The first thing the Navy did was put a bunch of us on a train to San Diego for basic training,’’ Howard recalled. “It was a very long train ride for a country boy.’’

Howard trained in San Diego for several months and then the Navy assigned him to temporary duty at Pearl Harbor. Howard was bunking on a supply ship in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 when the Japa-nese Naval Air Force came calling.

“I was sound asleep that morn-ing when the bomb explosions woke me up,’’ Howard admitted. “By the time I got dressed and on deck the main attack was over but I did see a lot of Japanese planes flying around.’’

“There were fires and smoke everywhere you looked, it was horrible,” Howard added. “Since I wasn’t assigned to that ship, I didn’t

have anything to do but watch; but the watching didn’t last long be-cause I was quickly assigned to a burial detail.”

“Now that is a duty you don’t ever want to have. It didn’t take long before we had used up all the caskets in Hawaii and they started flying caskets in from the states. Fortunately, I didn’t have to pull any dead sailors out of the water, another naval detail did that. They took dozers and dug big trenches. We put up strings lines to mark each grave with the right names so that if their family wanted to move their casket back to the states, the right grave could be found. We put all that on a map.”

Total casualties at Pearl Harbor were 2,402 with 1177 on the battle-ship USS Arizona that still lies on the bottom of Pearl Harbor bay. The battleship USS Oklahoma was second with 429 deaths followed by two other battleships, the USS Cali-

fornia with 105 killed and the USS West Virginia with 106 deaths.

Approximately 355 sailors sur-vived the attack on the USS Ari-zona. Two years ago, only about 4% of those were still alive. It’s not known how many total military per-sonnel survived the attack on Pearl Harbor which occurred at 11:55 AM Central Standard Time just as many people were leaving church, but that number has to be small in 2013.

“After I finished up on the burial detail I was assigned to the fuel sup-ply ship the USS Neches named af-ter the Neches River in Texas. They sent the Neches out to supply high octane fuel to some carriers around Midway but we were picked off by a Japanese submarine.’’

“I’ll never forget that night,’’ Clyde Howard said. “I was sleep-ing on deck when we heard a loud noise, which turned out to be a dud Japanese torpedo that didn’t ex-plode. But the next torpedo about ten minutes later hit around the en-gine room and caused a big explo-sion.”

“One of my buddies sleeping right next to me was killed in that blast. It seemed like everything was on fire. I kept wondering how come the high-octane fuel we were carry-ing didn’t explode. It wasn’t but a little while before all of us had to get in the water in life jackets or on life rafts.”

The official naval time line on the sinking of the Neches says that the dud torpedo hit the ship at 0310 hours, the second torpedo from the Japanese Submarine I-72 hit at 0319 hours. The Neches slowly settled forward and the list to the starboard

Above: Emmitt Clyde Howard in his office at Red Stick Armature

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side increased. The Neches sank to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean 120 nautical miles from Pearl Harbor at 0437 hours with the loss of fifty-seven men.

“After the Neches sank, I was assigned to another ship and the rest of the war was pretty routine navy life for me,” Clyde Howard re-called. “But I tell you, the last place anyone wants to be is in a life boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”

“When Paw Paw was at Pearl Harbor, he was waiting to be sent back to the states to a diesel me-chanic school,’’ Carrick Joe How-ard, Clyde’s grandson and big-gest fan, interjected. “I always say that if Paw Paw had gone to diesel mechanic school, all us Howards would have been diesel mechanics instead of motor re-winders.”

When Joe Howard got back from the war, he attended the Vo-Tech School in Bogalusa on the GI Bill where he learned electric mo-tor rewinding. After graduating, Joe Howard moved to Baton Rouge where he worked as an electrician out of the IBEW Union. In 1959,

Clyde Howard opened up his first rewinding shop in a garage size building off Hank Drive. He used an attic fan motor for his first re-winding machine and a stove oven in a sheet metal box as his first bak-ing machine. Today, the Howard electrical motor rewind operation that started in 1959 employs 65 people in a 71,000 square foot fa-cility. The name of the company is Red Stick Armature.

“I remember a re-wind motor and machine shop that was located downtown where the Baton Rouge RiverCenter is now. I did a lot of work for the owner on tugboats that were his customers. When he re-tired, I sort of absorbed his custom-ers because they needed someone to keep them going, and they knew me,” Howard continued.

Looking around his modern day 71,000 square foot facility on High-way 61 near St. Francisville,

Clyde Howard shook his head, “Not in my wildest dreams would I have imagined the business grow-ing this big.’’

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Port Hudson Cemetery: 144 Years and CountingBy James Ronald skains

The Port Hudson National Ceme-tery, established by the Federal Gov-ernment in 1869 with the purchase of 8 acres from James Gibbens for $3,000, now has an annual operating budget of $1.2 million with 9 full time employees.

“We recently purchased an ad-ditional 129 acres for $2 million,’’ Rex Kern, the director of the Na-tional Park Cemetery told the Post/Explorer. We had simply run out of space for new military personnel burial sites. There are over 13,000 former members of the US military and their spouses buried here at the Port Hudson Cemetery.’’

“Just before we completely ran out of space, we were able to get the 129 acres developed. The new section of the Park is known as the Louisiana National Park. We aver-age about 450 funerals a year and have former military personnel from the Civil War to the current Iraqi and Afghanistan wars buried here. 6 sol-diers who lost their lives in the Mid-dle East conflicts are buried at Port Hudson.’’

“Size wise, Port Hudson is small in comparison to other National Cemeteries,’’ Kern pointed out. “Some have up to a thousand acres of burial sites. However, Port Hud-son is what we call a Memorial Site because it commemorates a signifi-cant event in our military history.”

The $375 per acre that James Gibbens received in 1869 would probably translate into $50,000 per acre in 2013 dollars. As part of the buy-sell agreement with Gibbens, the Federal Government agreed to build a first class gravel road from

the cemetery down to the banks of the mighty Mississippi so that visi-tors wanting to visit the cemetery would have easy access to the site.

Kern’s business card is interest-ing. It reads U.S. Department of Vet-erans Affairs – National Cemetery Administration – Port Hudson/Nat-chez National Cemetery Complex – 20978 Port Hickey Road – Zachary, LA 70791. Apparently, Port Hudson and Natchez cemeteries are tied to-gether under the administration of the Department of Veteran Affairs. This federal complex has been for 144 years a steady economic factor in the area due to construction proj-ects at the site and the cemetery it-self bringing thousands of visitors to

the area.For years, the Zachary Histori-

cal Association has worked to keep

the significance of the Port Hudson National Cemetery in the public’s eye by including it in a continuous stream of activities in the area in-cluding tours of historical places and homes. A visit to the cemetery is on the agenda for the June 23 Zachary Historical Association Event. Sev-eral re-enactors will be on hand to tell the stories of yesteryear legends.

Jessie Spears, longtime fixture in the Zachary school community will portray Archie Simmons, a runaway slave who joined the Union Army and fought at the Battle of Port Hud-son. Simmons, who lived until 1938 and was buried at the Port Hudson Cemetery, recounted numerous times his recollection of events at Port Hudson in 1863. Spears told the Post/Explorer: “When I do the Ar-chie Simmons role at the cabin, I say to people, you see that bed. Well that is where I died. I get a lot of strange looks especially from the kids.”

“Sometimes as Archie, I tell the story of his death. He was on his deathbed but rose up to look out the window. When he did, he told his family, I can see the Angel of Death

Pictured above: Jessie Spears, Darrell McClung, Rachal Pecora, and Emily Moore at Port Hudson National Cemetery as re-enactors

Tuesday, July 2, 2013 5

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in the window. Shortly thereafter, Archie told his family that he could see the Angel of Death at the foot of his bed. A few minutes later he died.”

Another character re-enactor will

be John Gibbens, played by Darrell McClung. Gibbens is the man who reaped the windfall in the sale of the 8 acres in 1869. The 8 acres was a small portion of the large plantation he owned that reached the banks of

the river near Port Hickey.Two students of Ryan Southall,

well-known local historian, re-en-actor, and history teacher at Zachary High, Emily Moore and Rachel Pec-ora will alternate playing the role of Celine’ Fremaux who lived through both the battles of Baton Rouge and of Port Hudson as a pre-teenager. Celine’ kept a detailed diary of each day’s events during the dark days of 1863. Keeping a daily diary was a family tradition. The dairy was pub-lished in 1987 by the University of Georgia Press under the title of: “Celine – Remembering Louisiana 1850-1871.”

Rachel pointed out that she had taken World History in Mr. South-all’s class. “I did not realize until then that the Civil War had such worldwide effect, both politically and economically. The Civil War didn’t just happen. History has so many intangibles about it but here in this area it is all around us.”

“With the new addition to the Port Hudson National Cemetery, it will be many generations before it will need to be expanded,’’ Rex Kern concluded.

A few things are certain even to the casual observer. The grounds are kept in immaculate shape; many people from out of the area visit the cemetery each year, numerous gen-erations have passed on since the first shovel of dirt was turned in developing the National Cemetery; and millions of tons, if not billions of tons, of water has flowed down the Mississippi River just a short distance to the west of Port Hudson National Cemetery.

Above: Rex Kern, Director of the Port Hudson National Cemetery and Betty Tucker ofthe Zachary Historical Association discuss an upcoming event.

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Town of Clinton will be Hosting the 8th Annual Red, White, and Blueberry Festival July 5-6

The 8th Annual Red, White, and Blueberry Festival will be held July 5th -6th in conjunction with the Community Market on Saturday. The festival will kick off on Friday evening at 6 p.m. in front of the Town Hall with a small ceremony to officially begin the festivities. There will be fun activities for the children, food vendors and a fireworks display. Anyone wanting to participate in the ceremony or have questions/suggestions can call the town hall between the hours of 8AM – 4PM Monday thru Friday at (225) 683-5531.

On June 11, 2013, the Louisianan Emergency Preparedness Associa-tion presented Captain Bonnie Hines with a dedication award for her ef-forts in Public Education. Due to Captain Hines’s efforts, Fire Protec-tion District No. 1 of West Feliciana has essentially doubled its public ed-ucation and outreach efforts in just three years. Captain Hines’s manag-es the Public Education program and Emergency Services Apprenticeship Program at Fire Protection District No. 1. The ESAP program is made up of high school age kids that are interested in becoming a firefighter or emergency medical worker. She was presented the award at the LEPA conference in New Orleans on June 11, 2013.

Hines Honored for Achievements

On June 15, 2013, the Louisiana State Firemen’s Association presented twenty nine volunteer firefighters with education reimbursement grants at a ceremony in Scott, Louisiana. The grants were offered though the U.S. Fire Administration’s SAFER Grant program. Jeremy Stogner was on hand to receive one of those of those grants. Jeremy has been a volunteer firefighter with Fire Protection District No. 1 and with St.: Francisville Fire Depart-ment over five years. He is a certified firefighter and Louisiana Emergency Medical First Responder. Jeremy graduated with a Mechanical Engineering Degree from Louisiana State University in May 2013.

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